SOUTH AFRICA'S EXPORTS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 154, 16 November 1912, Page 8

SOUTH AFRICA'S EXPORTS

Writing from London on September 20, a correspondent remarks that Australia and New Zealand will soon have to look to their laurels as produee exporting countries if the predictions made in Lon-1 don on behalf of South Africa should be realised as a result of the advantageous arrangements just completed by that country with the powerful shipping combination of which the doughty Sir Owen Phillips is. the controlling spirit. Within six years eight new liners, none of them less than 15,000 tons, will be available for cargo at rates highly favorable to the agricultural and fruit industries of South Africa. A steaming rate as regular as that of an express railway service has been arranged for. Despatch from Capetown to Covent Garden will occupy seventeen days. There will be none of ! the dawdling and miscalculations which have so frequently resulted in the English markets being swamped with Australian fruit in one week, and left unsupplied a week or two later. Mr. Chiap- ( pini, the South African Trade Commis-' sioner in London, takes an enthusiastic , view of the effect of the shipping coil'' tract which his country has concluded. He regards it as certain there will be "an enormous expansion" of the exportation from South Africa of meat, eggs, maize, peaches, grapes, pears, nectarines and other produce. The fruit already received from the country is usually of high quality, and has become generally known aa being among the best imported from any country. The freight fixed for South, African maize during the next ten j years is only about one-tkird of the present rate far the competing export from Argentina. The new steamship line will take emigrants from England to South Africa at fares averaging 20 per cent, below the ordinary third-class rate.