[?]CE CREAM MAKERS ANNOYED

Chronicle (Levin), 2 April 1947, Page 5

[?]CE CREAM MAKERS ANNOYED

-press Association

By elegrapti-

WELLINGTON, April 1. "This is the most unfair p'i'ece of legisiation the Govemment has perpetrated, " said Mr. G. Martyn Renner, secretarv of the Wholesale lce Cream Federation, today, when commenting 011 the removal of the subsidy on sugar used for manufaeturing purposes. ' ' It is just one of a run of things Jatelv aimed at the ice cream manufaeturing industrv, though this time there is a broader application. " Alr. 'Renner said that in December the Govemment aunounced a rise in the price of unsalted butter which came into effect in Januarv. This rise was from Is 4-Jd to 2s OSd per 1b., or 45 per cent. The industrv had been told it could get uuliinited milk from the surplus town supply, which was not true. Manufacturers were forced, at certain times of the year, to use unsalted butter. Now, as tlie last straw, had come the announcement of the abolition of the sugar subsidy which raeant the price would now be £53 instead of £31 a ton, or a rise of about 70 per cent. JSugav and butterfat were the maiu ingredients 111 the manufacture of ice cream and the indastry which, with the exeeption of the saies tax, had absorbed all production costs for the, past eight to ten years without passing them on, was now at the crossroads and the public would have to pay the piper.