LARGE DEAL IN CHEESE

Taranaki Daily News, 27 January 1934, Page 6

LARGE DEAL IN CHEESE

SPECULATION IN HAWKE’S BAY

POSSIBILITIES OF ITS SUCCESS.

VARIOUS FAVOURABLE FACTORS.

CHEESE NOW THE CHEAPEST FOOD.

A speculator is reported to have bought the whole of the remainder of the season’s cheese output of a southern Hawke’s Bay factory. His venture will cost him the major part of £lO,OOO, some of which he has recently cleared in a wool speculation. Men in touch with the cheese situation seen yesterday at New Plymouth thought there was a fair chance of the speculator making money on his deal, depending, of course, on what he paid per pound for the cheese. The position in England now with cheese is that it is the cheapest food when the prices of other foods are compared with it, it was stated. Therefore there is every chance of it showing an improvement in value, particularly as meat is steadily rising. Lamb is double the price it was this time last year, and there is every indication that mutton will share in the rise. A certain measure of control of imports of meat to Great Britain, particularly from Argentina, is a meat price-cutting factor. The restriction of imports of bacon from foreign countries has resulted in a 50 per cent, increase in the price of that foodstuff in Britain. All these factors make cheese now the cheapest food on the British market at to-day’s values. Another factor is that for some time the tremendous imports of bacon from Denmark and Poland resulted in it being sold at a very low price on the British market, gaining many consumers of the foodstuff in the process. With the appreciation of the value of bacon this block of consumers will probably revert to cheese. Canadian cheese is one penny per pound higher thtf.n New Zealand on the British market, and the feeling is that the consumer is not prepared indefinitely to pay one penny a pound premium for Canadian cheese. Further, cheese may be expected to appreciate in value following upon the rise in butter. The sum and total of these factors, it was stated, give the speculator in question a good chance of profiting by his enterprise.