TINNED BUTTER.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18018, 5 November 1920, Page 8

TINNED BUTTER.

POSSIBILITIES OF TRADE WITH ; WEST AFRICA. A resident of Sierra Leone and ' Lagos, who is visiting New Zealand, emphasised to a Dominion reporter yesterday the posibilities of trade in tinned butter with the British pos-’ sessions on the West Coast of Africa. ! “At the present time,” he said, 1 “there are two sources of butter for the whole of the West Coast of Africa. By far the greater portion of the butter used comes from Denmark, and the remainder from Dorset and Somersetshire, in England. High prices are, of course, the bugbear of the coast, and in Addah and Accra I have paid 2/3 and 3/6 per half pound tin. Even then the butter was invariably old, and often quite rancid and unpalatable. . . The natives are great lovers of butter, and although they cannot obtain it cheaply, they buy it in great quantities. As they are accustomed to ‘trade productions,’ unscrupulous traders buy ancient consignments of tinned butter and sell it to the gullible krooman! "It is considered by residents of the Gold Coast that it should be an easy thing for the Dominion at the present time, given extra shipping facilities, to take the place of Denmark in supplying an essential dairying product which would be both appreciated and well paid for. There could, perhaps, be inaugurated a direct trade from New Zealand along the coast/the chief centre of distribution being Sierra Leone. From that port, at which any amount of butter could be stored, coastal vessels could convey it to Seceondi, Cape Coast Castle, Addah, Lomi, Accra, and Lagos, the principal ports. From these centres the butter would be distributed into the hinterland. New Zealand butter is vastly superior to either the British or Danish production, and once your product gets to the coast, the inhabitants would scorn the productions of other dairying countries-''