Milk Dispute Gets More Involved

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 438, 21 August 1928, Page 16

Milk Dispute Gets More Involved

THREE SEPARATE FACTIONS FEAR OF MONOPOLY Further complications are expected in the dispute between the Whole-Milk Producers’ Association and the Milk Vendors’ Association over the prices to be paid producers, wholesale. At present, there are three factions figuring in the impasse—the producers, the small vendors, and the large vendors. The chief concern of the small vendors is the fear of a near monopoly in any change in the present system of milk distribution, and they do not want to accept the proposal to place distribution in Auckland on the lines of the municipal method in Wellington. The small vendors, some of whom are producers, point out that suburban production in Auckland is widely different from that in Wellington. They believe that the suggested system similar to that in Wellington would not be in their interests, and state that they are not associated with the large vendors in the dispute. That the large vendors offered the producers 2d a gallon less than half the retail price for milk delivered at the depot is the contention of the small vendors, who assert that they are prepared to let the prices remain as formerly.