THE MEAT MARKET.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 March 1921, Page 5

THE MEAT MARKET.

RESTRICTED BUYING IN TARANAKI. SHIPPING PROSPECTS. Buyers for the Taranaki Farmers’ Meat Company are now operating on a limited scale. The manager (Mr. H. B. Gray) stated yesterday that the company was buying lambs and boner and eanner cattle, but was not operating wholly as a buyer of stock. Owing to the unsettled state of shipping and of markets for all the products of freezing companies, it was considered inadvisable at the present time to buy, with the exceptions mentioned. Lambs were only being taken because the company did not wish to leave them in the haijds of shareholder clients. A schedule of prices for dealing with stock on owners* account had been issued. Mr. Gray continued, and the buyers had been given a supply for distribution among clients. Already a certain quantity of stock had come in to be. dealt with on this system, and it was expected that after the Easter holidays the works would xbe operating at full capacity, in both mutton and beef. In the case of mobs of 300 or over the company was prepared to fell monger the wool and keep it separate and cure the pelts and keep them separate, or it would take the skins over at valuation. With regard to shipping. Mr. Gray said that it was very difficult to get the shipowners to enter into any definite arrangements for space. The Overseas Shipowners’ Committee would be relinquishing control of insulated space at the end of April. The Smart Road cool stores were not now over-taxed, but it was hard to arrange for future shipments. In April the Port Hacking probably would be taking 9008 freight carcases of meat and possibly also 200 casks of tallow. Efforts were beingmade to get a steamer to load at New Plymouth in May for English West Coast ports, as a better demand than in London existed there for certain qualities of our meat. The company had not yet been able to g6t anything definite from the Federal Steam Navigation Company regarding such a vessel, how-