FLOUR SUPPLIES

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume XVII, Issue 5882, 9 April 1920, Page 2

FLOUR SUPPLIES

MERCHANT PREDICTS SHORTAGE. “In six months’ time there will fie one of the sharpest pinches in the flour business that New. Zealand has ever .seen,” is the opinion *of Mr H. Baldwin, the well-known flour and gram mwchaint, who has just returned from a tour of investigation among the millers in the South Island. At the present time the ordinary trade terms for flour in Wellington are £l9 per b>n cx store, or £l6 10s per ton f.o.b, in the south. Mr Baldwin says that there is no miller in the Dominion with more than B sjx months’ supply of wheat for gristing, and that a proportion of the wheat Jn hand is stuff that in ordinary years would bo looked at, a second time if

offered as fowl wheat. The shortage of wheat is so acute that the farmer can include such stuff in what he is offering as “firsts"' (mill tig wheat), ami say to tlie miller. “Well, take it or leave it I In order to gat the milling wheat, the “seAmds” included have to be taken e/ad paid for as milling wheat. On gristing such Wheat the hlpwer carries a lot of”thc* whole wheat away, accounting for a loss of at least 25 per cent. With the shortage in Australia, and the embargo placed upon export, it is clear, in Mr Baldwin’s opinion, that there is not much hope from'that quarter. The eolutinuaJtion of the drought in New South Wales is also a factor working against mormai crops this year. Quotation-! ftojn San Francisco have already been received, vi*., per ton e.i.f., but as the new season’s crop is due in alaother lour months that price may be modi/jed- With the exchange at the present rate, American flour would cost £BO per ton, yet it would not surprise Mr Baldwin if we had fo bring flour across the Pacific before the cuid of the year.