The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. VICTORIA'S BUTTER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 19, 14 May 1914, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. VICTORIA'S BUTTER.

The Melbourne butter market was suffering from an extraordinary slate of affairs at the end of Aprils and in explaining the position the ‘’Age” states that a good season in New South Wales and Queensland, coupled with a dry season in Victoria, has led to the importation into Victor* of enormous quantities of butter from the northern States. Its quality, moreover, is inferior only to the choicest brands that Victoria produces, and, ns it is being offered in the wholesale market at 2d to 3d per lb loss than the iprice demanded for Victorian butter, it is being disposed of without difficulty. Such Victorian butters as can be sold at anything like; the same price are distinctly inferior in quality, and consequently are a glut upon the market. Thousands of cases have been put, and are still being put, into cool stores for Want of purchasers. The positieu Las become very acute, and will probably remain so until climatic changes in the

north cut off supplies. The only \ic-j torian butter comparable in quality j with that which is arriving from the northern States is the superfine, huh it is so scarce, and consequently com-, mauds such a high price, that it stands j in a class by itself. Present supplies| are snapped up at Is 2d per lb whole-] sale (Is 4d retail), and, in fact, much more than is now available could be dis- 1 posed of at that figure. The outstanding fact about the business is that New South Wales and Queensland can sell in Melbourne butter at a lower price and of better “quality than most of the local butter, and the inevitable conclusion is that local methods of manufacture are capable ot very great improvement. When the bulk of \ ictorian butter is raised to a standard of quality at least as high as that of butter from the northern States, these destructive periodical invasions will cease. The principal cause of the inferiority, the “Age” further states, is said to be the prevailing faulty methods of storing, handling, and carting cream before it reaches the butter factories, and until effective measures are adopted to ensure that factories receive cream in a fresh and untainted condition, inferior buttter will continue to disgrace the Melbourne market. From all of which dairymen in New Zealand may take warning.