NEW ZEALAND BUTTER

Waipa Post, Volume 31, Issue 1762, 25 May 1926, Page 6

NEW ZEALAND BUTTER

CAUSES PERTURBATION IN AUSTRALIA.

50,000 BOXES FOR MELBOURNE

The following is from Smith's (Sydney) Weekly: Butter is the stuff with which merchants grease poor Dummy, before they roast him and swallow him. Mr Paterson, MVH.R.. is the chef who invented the " butter stabilising plan/' It stabilises a number of merchants very nicely indeed,. There is a " stabilisation committee," consisting chiefly of merchants. In its constitution it carefully avoids claiming powers of price-fixing. That would be illegal.

But it has fixed wholesale prices in Melbourne and Brisbane at 205 s 4d, and in Sydney at 196 s per cwt; and the retail price to Dummy from the grocer has been raised from 4d to 5d per lb since the new year began. This inflation of price has given the Melbourne traders no chance to d,o a smart deal in New Zealand butter. The product from New Zealand is dumped to Victoria at 14s per cwt less than New Zealand home prices. It pays 2d per lb duty. After paying duty the. Melbourne trad.ei-s make a clear Id per lb at "stabilised" prices; and if they reexport another 2d per lb as rebate of duty is then allowed. This business is a great loss of trade to the Australian butter producer. HOW THE THING WORKS. Early \in April the steamer Manuka came to Melbourne from New Zealand with the following dumped butter on her manifests: — Boxes Consignee butter J. E. Hardbury & Son 3500 Holdenson & Neilson 3000 M. Keever & Co 1300 Western District Co 10°° Gippsland, & Northern Co 168 New Zealand Loan Co 700 Barrow Bros 630 Foggitt Jones, Ltd 500 Austral Grain & Ambler 750 Wright Bros 200 Swallow & Ariell 50 Total { n.7 9S The first five firms on the list above are " representing the producers" on the stabilisation committee. How do the Australian producers like their total of 5968 boxes of New Zealand butter in one shipment? As far back as 3rd March the Sydney .Daily Guardian announced: " New Zealand butter is being purchased by Victorian merchants. . . .

The butter would not show a profit on immediate Australian prices, but for forward delivery there is every prospect of a good profit if the present policy of rushing the Australian prices up is maintained." HAPPY COINCIDENCE. This was sound prophecy; and the stabilisation committee made no mistake about " rushing pric.es up." The arrival of 11798 boxes-of New Zealand butter on the Manuka coincided with a "stabilised" rise of Id per lb on the Melbourne market; and by that rise >4 a profit of Id per lb was guaranteed to the importers. Further things are happening, and the profitable import of New Zealand butter, under prices artificially fixed in Australia is going on. At the end of April the Manuka brought approximately another 50,000 boxes of New Zealand butter. The total butter imported and to a-rrive from New Zealand is quite 100,000 boxes. There is detriment to the Australian Dummy, because the New Zealand, butter does not reach him except at artificial prices. There i s detriment to the Australian producer, whose butter is displaced. The only benefit is to the New Zealand producer—and to the importing merchants in Melbourne.

CANADA'S EXAMPLE,

When Australia recently put butter into Canada, 15,000 boxes at a time, at a lower price than the Australian home price, the Canadian Government put on the butter its dumping duty of 3 cents per lb. This was done in the interest of Canadian producers. Our Australian producers meet an exactly similar competition from New Zealand. (Has the Australian Government nothing to say about it?