TRADE WITH SOUTH AFRICA.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 162, 20 July 1901, Page 3

TRADE WITH SOUTH AFRICA.

ADVICE TO SEND AN EXPERT. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright London, July 19. Lieut.-Colonel Mackay, just returned from the Cape, says that it is worth while for any State, or for Australia as a whole, to send a competent commercial agent to South Africa to develop the trade.

PROPOSED SOUTH AFRICAN AGENCY. The following is a portion of the address given by the Chairman of the Canterbury Farmers’ Co-operative Association “ Seeing that Federation in Australia was likely to limit our openings there, and thinking that South Africa was likely to prove a good market for our food products, your directors, in conjunction with the Timaru Association, sent our Sydney agent to South Africa to report, and if he found the situation favorable to make arrangements for opening a permanent agency there for our two Associations. Ho

arrived there in January and stayed three months, going to the various centres and making an exhaustive search into all the openings there might be for our x-arious lines of farm produce; and the results of his investigations were, I regret to inform you, that he did ‘not see any grounds to I warrant the establishment of a special permanent agency. If,’ said he, ‘ New Zealand wheat were considerably more popular, or if the agency combined the representation of some of the best flour mills, dairy, meat, and jam factories, and that suitable shipping facilities were available, then it would be possible to get sufficiently good results.’ He, however, made arrangements with different brokers in tlie four large shipping ports with whom

we are now in a position to make consignments should favorable opportunities arise. To summarise his reports :—New Zealand wheat, it seems, contains too much moisture, and is not liked out there, they using the hard American and Australian wheats, saying that New Zealand flour does not keep in their climate, and

then the price, too, is lower there than in I London. Oats are only used for military purposes and a few for seed purposes, so few, however, that lie believes 5000 tons would supply tlie whole country for a year. American bacon, ham, and cheese, havo almost a monopoly, being better got up and keeping bettor. Butter must be shipped in lib tins, and oatmeal in 71b and 141 b tinst Frozen meat would have a large opening wero it not that in that climate lean meat is the only meat they care for, and that without cool stores of our own we could do nothing, tho whole trade being a monopoly in the hands of two companies, the "Do Beers ’ and the Soutli African Supply Company. Meadow hay is not used there. With potatoes and onions, however, the case is different. For

three or four months in tho year beginning with April they might be shipped in 70 to 1001 b cases with advantage, but after that time they would not be sound enough to stand the voyage, and then their own crop comes in at the Cape. The trade is cut up into four lai-gc shipping ports, the Capo, Fort Elizabeth, East London, and Durban, each hundreds of miles apart, which greatly adds to the difficulties of

establishing an agency. I myself think that in considering a trade with South Africa wo are apt to be misled by tho vastncss of tho country, the Cape to tho Zambesi containing over a million of square miles, but tho population of that vast area

when tho late war commenced was only, roughly speaking, 4,500,000, of which

3,500,000 were black races, Kaffirs, Zulus, etc., whereas tho white population, including tho Transvaal and tlie Orange Free State, xvas not much bigger than that of Ncxv Zealand, being about 910,000,

of xvhich 450,000 xx'crc Dutch, mostly Boors on their farms, xvho buy but little of anything. Tho remaining 470,000, of which 40,000 are of British extraction, are tho people xve havo mainly to reckon xvith now in starting a trade. Of course in a fexv years under British rule tho population and tho trade xvith it xx-ill inercaso enormously.