BUTTER OR CHEESE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 211, 5 March 1912, Page 4

BUTTER OR CHEESE

ELTHAM COMPANY PUTTING IN CHEESE PLANT. A very largely attended, meeting of shareholders in the Eltham Co-operative Dairy Company was held on Saturday to consider the question of going in for ih.e manufacture of cheese. Mr. H. D. Forsyth (chairman of directors) presided, and gave details regarding the cost of installing a cheese plant, which was estimated at £14,000, while a sum of some £9OO would be required to be spent on improvements at some of the creameries ii' it, were decided to go in for cheese. He mentioned that the directors were unanimously in favor of having a dual plant; It was not a matter of cheese versus butter, but one of cheese and butter. If a dual plant were installed it was the directors' intention to manufacure butter in the early months of the year (September and October) so that suppliers would have a good start with the calves, and prices were usually high for September butter at Home. Mr. T. O. Hodgson said the estimated cost of putting in a dual plant was £14,000, and the interest on that sum at 5 per cent, would be £7OO, while allowing 5 per cent, for depreciation would bring the total to £I4OO. A half-penny per lb. butter-fat on last year's output would amount to £3500, so that a farth- \ ing per lb. deducted for a term of years would pay for the dual plant. There was ,a difference of 3d per lb between butter and cheese on consignment, and allowing 2d per lb for the by-product they would have a penny a pound more to play with. With a dual plant there would be a difference of 2d per lb to play with for pigs and' calves and a penny a pound over and above that. Could they as business men go beyond that proposition? It might be said that they would lose on the present plant next year, but he explained that the plant was there, and paying interest on it was similar to paying insurance. They had lost practically £7OOO on the year's output, and by spreading the cost of a dual plant over a term of years, in six or eight years it •would be paid for, and there was just a probability that they would get back two or three times what they had lost this season. He was taking 2d as the net difference, for they must allow something for carting milk back and for the use of the land the pigs and calves run on. Butter would be made to October, which would give the calves a good start, and as regards whey, pasteurised whey was not the same as the old-fashioned whey. From about the middle of October to the middle of April they would make cheese. It was no use trying to pick the eyes out of the market every year; they would have to have a general principle and carry it out. They might ask, what about the bacon fastory? If there was going to be anything like the difference anticipated they could afford to sacrifice some of the cheese money to pay the interest and do without pigs; it would be a kind of insurance fund. Farmers had to grip the whole of the management in regard to their products. Unlike shippers and merchants they could not pass increases on to the consumer. Their watchword should be, "To stand together." To a big strong company an -outlay of £14,000 was a mere' bagatelle. Never in the history of New Zealand had butter realised more than 113,4 aon sale or consignment. The difference between the sale of the Eltham output and shipping on consignment was roughly £21,000, and he did not think they would have lost that if they had a dual plant, because a dual plant meant a consignment policy. The past could not be any guide for the future; what happened this year might not happen next year. Cheese, however, was statistically strong. Supplies of butter were increasing from Siberia," also from Australia, where there was not likely to be an increase of cheese. Regarding whev butter, Mr. Hodgson explained that no first-class butter company was makin» %vhey butter, but with their expert but" ter-makers the quality of whev butter woukl increase by leaps and" bounds, though if ordinary butter came down whey butter would come down too. The increased moisture in cheese, starter butter and whey butter was equal to three farthings per lb. A motion instructing the directors to proceed with the installation of a dual plant was carried by a two to one majority—Abridged from Argus.