THE SHEEP SUPPLY FOR FREEZING.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 1937, 12 March 1885, Page 3

THE SHEEP SUPPLY FOR FREEZING.

One great fact in connection with the frozen-meat trade (writes the Lyttelton Times) has not been made as much of as it deserved. When the trade began, it was asserted freely by the people who know all about meat (as they know all about everything else) that the number of sheep in New Zealand would not stand the strain of export which the exporters were preparing for it. The calculations .of all calculators were, they declared too sanguine. Meat-freezers, shippers, shipowners with expensive refrigerating machines, were all destined by failure of the ■ sheep supply, to come to utter grief in the fools' paradise they wore constructing for themselves, The acis h,ave replied. In the first year and-a-half-end of 1882 to beginning of 1884—more thim "halt" a million fat carcases were sent away, and yet, iijlien tlie'export trade is slack, the prices of fat stock descend with disagreeable rapidity. "Moreover, beef, which was to have "'been advanced to an enormous yalue has remained stationary. There is not-much doubt that the demand for export has not nearly reached the value of production. That limit, on the other hand, has powers of expansion in both Islands which it would b,e hazardous to dilate upon.