PRODUCTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 July 1940, Page 2

PRODUCTION

NEW AUSTRALIAN RECORD. Australian sugar production last season reached a new record output ot 928.000 tons, the increase compared with 1938 being 106.000 tons. The value increased by £2,246.000 to £14,734,000. of which Queensland’s share was £14.042,000. In spite of an increase of 5 per cent in the tonnage retained for Australian requirements, the proportion exported rose to a record figure of 59 per cent. Queensland mills, which produced 891,000 tons, received for raw sugar delivered at nearest ports an average price, excluding “excess" sugar, only 6d per ton higher than that in 1938, but as a result of an increase in mill “peaks" it applied to a large quantity of sugar. The average price covering the whole of the Queensland production was, at £l5 1.5 s 3d. the best since 1935. Averages for individual mills varied according to the proportion of -excess" sugar; that is. sugar delivered by the mills in excess of the prescribed "peak" quotas and paid for at export price only. The reduction in the home price from £24 to £23 12s 6d in 1939 reflects the general rise in costs, according co the monthly bulletin of the Queensland Bureau of Industry, which comments that, “in view oF the trend toward a further increase in costs, the Sugar Agreement, assuming a stabilised wholesale price for sugar in Australia, appears to afford full protection to the interests of the consumer in relation to the position of the sugar producer.”

Provision for the 1940 output was for the acquisition of the basic mill quotas; that is, up to an aggregate of 737,000 tons of 94 net titre sugar, and for any additional tonnage found to be marketable because of contracts with the British Government to be covered by the acquisition of extra percentages of such quotas, as in 1939. Since then the British purchase of up to 500,000 tons of Australian 1940 season sugar has been announced. Subject to shipping being available, this will permit all the 1940 crop to be harvested.