The Butter Industry.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 106, 9 May 1904, Page 3

The Butter Industry.

CAUSES OF LOW PRICES. There has been a still further fall in tire price of New Zealand butter in the English market. A cable message received by a Wellington firm advises that the price is Bd. This is equivalent to about HBs per cwt - ' . ■ , , . "Of course, -the price is low, but our butter has been down to eightpence before in the London market," said Mr •!. ti. Harkness. secretary of the National Dairy Association, speaking to a New Zealand Times representative on Friday on the subject. "Three years ago we should have been glad to receive eightpence for our autumn butter; but the point is that those "in the know ' have been predicting that the price of our butter would keep up this autumn, in consequence of the Rus-so-Japanese war. It was expected that the war would restrict the output from Siberia, but it has not done so. .Moreover, as the result of the depression in trade in England following the South African war, the. spending power of the consumers of .New Zealand butter in not so great to-day as it has hc-ii, whilst at the same time we have im-.-ii sending lurger quantities of dairy produce Home than ever before. All these causes have operated against us. '■' The diflieully," continued • r Harkness, "is that we have been putting our butter into I lie hands of too many people at Home. It was supposed' that the effect of this would he to induce competition between the dealers, and that good prices would thus be obtained ; but, as a matter of fact, it has had just the conntrary effect. I certainly think the time has arrived when belter arrangements should be made for the distribution oF our produce at Home." Asked what better arrangements lie would suggest, 11 r Harkness said the proposal had been made that an exchange should be established where our dairy produce would be

offered for public competition, just as wool is. At. present half the factories are sending their goods Home by open consignment. Some light is thrown on the situation by a letter received in Wellington by it London firm. " The butter market is utterly demoralised, chiefly through the action of llie Danes. Their prices, ns lixed by the committee In Copenhagen, fluctuati. violently. In two weeks they rise in price ten kroner, and immediately afterwards do the very opposite." New Zealand butter, the writer states, was worth from lulls to KWs before the Kaikoura arrived, but before that butter was discharged the price of the Danish article dropped six kroner. The action was met by a drop in prices on the part of some holders of Australian and New Zealand butter, and as some firms apparently had more butter than they could conveniently handle, the let, it go for the besl

price they could get. New Zealand butter was thus selling at, illls to 945. On 24th March New Zealand butter was being offered in Liverpool at 92s and »Hs. and it was even then diflicull to find buyers. On the 30th March Danish butter was again reduced foul- kroner, and this forced the New Zealand price to '.His. Best Siberian was worth 88s before this fall, and sincethen it had been selling from 78s to 80s. " The Danes," said one commercial man, ' are able under their excellent system of control, to watch the market and regulate the quantities and prices. We, on the oilier hand, have no lixed control, and our shipments of butler and those from Australia and the Argentine, are put on the market in a haphazard way to face falling prices. 1 hope the severe lesson I the factory owners have learned will induce them to pause before they continue this policy."