WHOLESALE BUTTER UP.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 323, 9 October 1908, Page 5

WHOLESALE BUTTER UP.

WILL CROCERS INCREASE PRICES? The members of the Wellington Butter Committee yesterday agreed to increase the wholesale prices or butter in Wellington by halfpenny per • pound. The increase begins to-day.: The wholesale prices now will bo Is. per pound in bulk and Is. OJd. per pound patted.- .The grocers recently, have been adding .2d., .per>pound for profit, but at the halfpenny, rise it is considered uncertain whether -they will. increase the retail price or bo content . with three-halfpence per pound profit. Tlio increase of the wholesale rate is apparently based on the JSltham sate of its output,at, 113 d. f.p.b.. When Jd. is added for the merchant or agent arid the patting, that price is-increased'to Is. Old. The Bales of outputs at lljd., however, have been exceedingly rare —probably there is only this. one—so that the local price is apparently ' being• fixed on the basis, of tho maximum price, l and riot on tno' average price. Possibly, however, the local mer- ' chants' consider that tho butter they sell to Wellingtonians possesses the maximum of quality. ' ° Therfe is no doubt that farmers this season, with the high-prices arid the prospect of a phenomenal output, havo every likelihood of getting the biggest incomes they ever had in their lives. Aro there any dairy farmers still left' who have put down no crops to supplement tho grass supply? This : seems likely t6 offer them the , chance of a lifetime if they will take tho precaution to properly grip it. Meantime the citizens have to pay. The only palliative' is the reflection that this time'the spoils'are going straight into the pockets of the producers. At the present time there seems to be no reason to modify 'the prediction The Dominion made a few weeks ago of dear butter for the next six months. Although the conditions of the British market do not yet justify expectations of high prices at Homo, the fact that local outputs are.: largely disposed of under fixed contract at fixed rates will rul« inflexibly- the . local price.. ■ It will; be a season for the margarino makers, of whom there are now at least two' firms operating in Wellington.