"MOST GRATIFYING"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 121, 25 May 1942, Page 3

"MOST GRATIFYING"

WOOL PRICE INCREASE RELIEF OF SOME ANXIETIES (P.A.) CHRISTCHURCH, Sunday. The increase in price for wool was most gratifying to sheepowners, said Mr. H, D. Acland, president of the New Zealand Sheepowners' Federation, to-night. The sheepowners had had to bear steadily increasing costs of production, together with other producers for export, since the beginning of the war. The price of wool, he said, had been fixed in 1939 between the British Government and Australia and New Zealand. The increase would be most beneficial to these sheepowners in the higher levels in both islands who made their living as graziers and would be some compensation toward their increased cost of mustering and other wages, carting, stores, etc. Those sheepowners had to depend entirely cn receipts from wool and surplus store stock, and the increase would relieve them of some of their anxieties. "The Minister of Marketing should be pleased with the joint efforts of the Governments of Australia, South Africa and New Zealand," said Mr. Acland. "The wisdom of the clause in the wool purchasing contract with Britain giving proportional treatment to the three woolgrowing Dominions is apparent, and the efforts on behalf of New Zealand woolgrowers in this connection have been fully justified." New Zealand wool, which was 97 per cent crossbred, was specially in demand for war purposes, he added. The Russian winter had demonstrated the vast superiority of wool for clothing over synthetic fibres. The former price was approximately 12Jd a lb, and the new average price would be slightly more than 14d.