BUTTER FOR CHINA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1690, 24 March 1917, Page 1

BUTTER FOR CHINA.

DOMINION EXPORTER S’ CHANCE.

Board’s Dairyman states that the opportunity for increasing the use of American butter and cheese at Shanghai, and throughout China, is exceptionally good at present. Butter is not used by the Chinese except by a comparatively small, though rapidly-growing, number of the wealthier and better classes. The normal consumption of butter in China is estimated at approximately 2,000,000 lb. per annum. Of this, about 40 per cent, was received at Shanghai. The exportation of dairy products from Russia is now prohibited, and no Siberian butter can be had in China markets. The cutting off of this source of supply has not resulted in creating so large a demand for the American product as might be expected. It is only recently that the American butter producers became more active. Through our American contemporary, Mr A. H. Kolbe, of New York, points out that there could be no better time than the present to establish a permanent demand for American butter in this market. The principal dealer in Siberian butter who now has an agent in San Francisco has received his first shipment which he is disposing of rapidly at retail at !)0 and 95 cents (Mexican) per lb., and cooking butter 75 cents. The 95 cent, kind is imported in bricks with carton covers. The 90cent butter is the same brand, brought over in bulk and bricked by himself. Several Chinese houses catering for foreigners have imported small lots through their Chinese friends, which they sell at one dollar (Mexican) per lb., and one strictly American firm is making regular imports of Californian tinned butler, which is being sold by retailers at 1 dol. 15 cents, and 1 dol. 20 cents (Mexican) a pound; but (here has been no organised effort to push the business. The same writer states that “(here is an increasing number of local dairies in Shanghai, some of them conducted in a sanitary way, and they produce an excellent quality of butler, which, being freshly made each day, meets with a ready sale at about 50 cents, per lb. But their output is not sufficiently extensive to warrant their consideration as a factor in the supply of but lei- for China. If Americans can produce better butter and sell the same in Shanghai at a trifle above the price of Australian butter, or can sell butler of equal quality at the same price, they can then do a large share of the business.