TRADE WITH DUTCH INDIES.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 July 1922, Page 8

TRADE WITH DUTCH INDIES.

RECIPROCAL POSSIBILITIES. GOOD MARKET FOR DAIRY PRODUCE. There arrived in Auckland from Sydney last week Mr. P. E. Teppema, Con-sul-General of the Netherlands for Australia and New Zealand. Air. Teppema has come on a mission to promote closer trade relations between the Dutch East Indies and the Dominion. The Dutch East Indies, Air. Teppema pointed out, have an area about seven times that of New’ Zealand, and a population of fifty millions, of whom forty millions are in Java, which is the most densely populated island in the world. “We have worked up a very considerable trade with Australia,” he said, “and now take from them from three to three and a half million pounds worth of products like flour, butter, condensed milk, biscuits, jams, leather, chemical goods, coal, and other articles. In return they take from us sugar, mineral oils, tea, kapok, coffee, sisal, rubber, gums, spices, timber and rattans, cocoa beans, tobacco and other raw products to the value >of about eight millions sterling. There has .been a very pronounced development in the last seven or eight years and as Australian manufacturing industries are being rapidly developed, and we supply only raw materials, the future promises an increasing demand for our products.

“So far as New Zealand is concerned, our trade at the present is almost negligible. The articles we have exported here have been mainly mineral oils, sugar, kapok, and tea, together with small items like a few cocoa beans and spices, while your exports to us are practically nil. We feel, of course, that unless we buy largely from New Zealand we cannot hope to establish a permanent export trade with you, but there is no reason in the world why a big reciprocal trade should not be developed between us. Your dairy products, butter and cheese, are of a higher standard generally than the Australian article, and the white population of Java, which is considerable, want a good article. In the export of high class dairy produce New Zealand would certainly have little difficulty in gaining a footing. There is also a growing demand for canned meats, and bacon and hams, and generally speaking I am confident that the Dominion has a very profitable market to be exploited in the Dutch East Indies, almost at her doors. What we cannot understand, in fact, is that New Zealand has never investigated the possibilities of an export trade to the Dutch East Indies. The whole of your exporting enterprise seems to be directed to the Home Country, yet here is a country ready to consume a considerable export from New Zealand within a few days’ steam of your shores.