MARKETING METHODS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 August 1938, Page 3

MARKETING METHODS

RECENT TREND CRITICISED. EXPORTS TO. GREAT BRITAIN. The growing tendency of some countries exporting to Britain to instal their own marketing organisations there was deprecated by Mr W. G. Lovell, chairman of Lovell and Christmas, Limited, at the annual meeting recently. These were mostly in skeleton form without warehouses or transport facilities. This practice, said Mr Lovell, robbed British importers who had built up trade and goodwill and financed factories in the countries from which the goods were exported. This state of affairs, contrary to national interest, would not be permitted in any other country in the world. It was a question of national importance, since the income tax on English importers’ profits disappeared, while the foreign exporters took care to see that the profits on their transactions were retained in their own countries.

Mr Lovell reviewed the important factors which had contributed to the year’s unfavourable results, the company’s net profit having fallen by almost £40,000. Several countries which in the past supplied large quantities of butter to the English market had either greatly diminished their shipments or ceased to export. This deprived the company, and its subsidiary companies, of commission earnings, and, in the case of factories, of raw materials for packing popular priced butter.

Owing to difficulties experienced by several Continental countries in finding financial and exchange facilities for buying commodities from overseas, including raw materials for home manufactures, several important markets had been closed against the company's produce. A subsidiary company, for instance, manufacturing casein had seen the price of casein drop from £5O to £23 a ton, after the closing of a market to which it had shipped thousands of tons annually.