GHEE MANUFACTURE

Taranaki Daily News, 5 September 1935, Page 16

GHEE MANUFACTURE

RESEARCH IN NEW ZEALAND. DIFFICULTIES IN MARKETING. “The placing of New Zealand-made ghee on the Indian market presents very great difficulties commercially,” said Professor W. Riddet, of Massey Agricultural College, recently. He explained that a considerable amount of work had been done for at least a year with the object of producing a ghee that would be attractive to. the Indian buyer. Anything for sale in India would ’ ave to conform very closely to what the purchaser there was used to and investigators had met with considerable technical difficulties in the matter of colour and taste. Much of the competition with native ghee, stated Professor Riddet, was coming from manufactured fats containing a high proportion of synthetic adulterants, mainly made from coconut, palm nut, soybean and peanut oils, in addition to whale oil. The texture of these had been brought to the right pitch by hydrogenation. At first these were underselling the Indian product, but later a heavy import duty was put on synthetic ghee. To overcome this the large industrial concerns established their own factories at Bombay and Calcutta, and the product was sold either direct or blended with the cheap native ghee. At present the test ghee was selling at from lOd to Is 3d per lb., New Zealand currency, and in order to compete against this a New producer would have to place his article on the Indian market at a price of 8d a lb., c.i:f. and e. Even when butter was down to 75s per cwt, it would be necessard to obtain about Is' per lb., c.i.f. and e. for ghee to make it a better paying proposition tha butter. Dealing with some of the technical difficulties that had confronted experimenters in the Dominion, Professor Riddet pointed out that there were two forms of ghee in India, that from the cow and that from the buffalo. The Buffalo ghee was colourless, owing to the absence of carotin, had a high melting point and was of coarse texture. Although there were" difficulties in decolourising the brighter New Zealand butter-fat without destroying its power of reabsorbing essential flavours, he was confident that these would be overcome. Cow fat ghee was more yellow than that from the buffalo, but was again less yellow than New Zealand butter-fat, there again being a problem in this case. The problem of flavours was likely to be a complex ope, continued Professor Riddet. Owing to the method of manufacture in India peculiar flavours were obtained by the addition of certain substances which contained high acid-producing organisms. The milk after one of these had been added was stored for ate much as a month and the ghee then made by the simple process of clarification.

“Although there are undoubtedly difficulties in the way of New Zealand entering the Indian market,” Professor Riddet concluded, “The matter should not be cast aside lightly. _ The time may, yet come when the dairy industry, by relieving an already overburdened butter market, might win in the aggregate by having such an outlet for surplus butter-fat. At the same time the matter is a national one and not for individual factories, who cannot afford to gamble on the vagaries of such a market.

“The situation in India appears to be that the average native cannot afford to pay for the type of ghee that we could economically turn out. As to outside markets it has to be remembered that the average Indian export to other Eastern countries does not amount to much more than 1000 tons a year. ’