REPLY TO MINISTER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 35, 11 February 1939, Page 7

REPLY TO MINISTER

BUTTER-BOX COSTS CONTINUED INCREASES [ Per Press Association.] PALMERSTON N„ Feb. 10. "The Hon. F. Langstone, Commissioner of State Forests, has taken exception to a protest made by the Dominion Producers’ Agency on behalf of its shareholding dairy companies against an increase in the price of butter-boxes from Is 41d in 1935-36 to the present provisional price of 2s 21d,” said Mr. P. B. Desmond, secretary of that organisation. "The Minister states that the quoted price of Is 4Jd is incorrect as even in the Manawatu district some factories are paying Is 6id for their boxes,” Mr. Desmond continued. "Butter companies operating in the Manawatu district are the Kairanga, Cheltenham. Awahuri Dairy Union, Rongotea, Rangitikei, Levin and Shannon. The secretaries of these companies have verified that the

actual prices paid by their companies for standard export butter-boxes nailed up and delivered for the 193536 season ranged from Is 3'3d to Is 4Sd. Under the customary year to year contracts, therefore, the price of Is 41d as quoted by the Dominion Producers' Agency for that year is a fair average. Furthermore, boxmaking firms which supplied the lowest priced boxes were not those that may have gone bankrupt as referred to by Mr. Langstone. They are still in business box-making at Wanganui and Palmerston North. "In subsequent years butter-boxes were supplied through the Government equalisation scheme and it is interesting to compare the uninterrupted sequence of increased prices for sub-standard nailed-up boxes from then on wards as follows: 1936-37, Is 9d ex box factory; 1937-38, Is 9&d ex box factory; 1938-39, 2s o’d to December 31, 1938, and 2s 2-id as from January 1. 1939. delivered plus Id a box for cost of wiring. “These are official prices charged to dairy companies by the Government equalisation pool and thus the increase referred to by the Dominion Producers’ Agency are statements ot fact,” added Mr. Desmond. Mr. Langstone had since stated that the current season’s price would be reduced to 2s Id but dairy companies had received no official advice of that, and evidently it was an afterthought. Even so. 2s Id a box would surely come within the category of continued increases against which the dairy companies were protesting.