BUTTER PREMIUMS

Taranaki Daily News, 3 January 1935, Page 16

BUTTER PREMIUMS

PRICE FOR DANISH PRODUCT. EXTRAORDINARY DISPARITY. Reasons for the disparity in' prices for Danish and colonial butters on the London market are advanced by Samuel Page and Son Limited, London, in a circular issued recently. The firm states: “The premium Danish obtains has always been a source of vexation to other countries, and this dissatisfaction must have reached an acute stage in the beginning of November, when the premium had attained the extraordinary figure of 50s to 52s per cwt. It is always a matter for the most strenuous endeavour on the part of importers of Australian and New Zealand butter and other descriptions to keep the difference in values as small as possible, but the tradition in the northern centres for Danish is of such long standing and so deeply rooted that generally speaking it is not possible to dislodge it from its advantageous position. This year, in addition to the normal priority given to Danish, exceptional conditions have ruled that have accentuated the Danish premium. “These conditions are not new, but are simply the old conditions in an extreme degree. The determining factor governing the extent of the premium obtainable for Danish over Australian and New Zealand has always been that of the relative supply. As the quantity from Denmark becomes smaller than that, of the total from the Commonwealth and the Dominion, so the premium for Danish increases, and vice versa, as it approximates, the premium tolls off. That is, the wider difference this season is chiefly due to the great increase in the imports of New Zealand and Australian in 1934 as against 1933, while the Danish supplies are only slightly larger, with the result that Danish this year has been in smaller volume in relation to the shipments from the Commonwealth and the Dominion.”