Vegetable Oils

Market

Review From London

From a Special Correspondent

London, Dec. 8.

I HAVE no doubt that the copra pro ducers in the South Seas are very satisfied with the prices they are getting; but we wonder how long it will last.

Last week, a new development took place in Malaya where, as you are no doubt aware, all the copra produced had to be offered to the Ministry of Food for export at a fixed price of £4O per ton, and oil at an equivalent price.

The new development is that for every 50 tons of oil sold to the Ministry of Food, they have a free market for 50 tons. In other words, it is a 50-50 basis —5O tons to the Ministry and 50 tons to the world market, free of allocation. This has meant that there have been pretty free offers of coconut oil during the past week or so, and some has been sold to Sweden and Ireland. Also, Malaya is now able to re-export, either in the form of oil or copra, any copra imported from outside countries.

The Philippine market shot up during November and, at one time, prices reached 290 dollars FOB. This was due more to a squeeze than to anything else, as we believe some of the sellers had sold for ward in the neighbourhood of 180 dollars; and, when the market went up. some of the natives defaulted and left some of the merchants short; and when the boats arrived in the Philippines and found no copra there, a squeeze developed, and an active bidding for copra, rather than let the boats go away empty.

The tendency during the past week has been towards lower prices, the quotation to-day being 265 dollars, after being over 290 dollars ten days ago. We rather an ticipate that the market will fall still further.

India has been shipping rather more ground nuts and ground nut oil this year.

Linseed and linseed oil have shown a tendency to give way from the high level reached this year. We understand that the agricultural policy in this country is to grow rather more linseed, and in two or three years’ time they expect to pro duce a crop of 100,000 tons or more, so that we shall become a little more in dependent of the Argentine, who have been particularly difficult in offering their supplies since the end of the war.

The general position of oils and fats is still very tight, but we remain cheerful and hope that although perhaps things may be slow in getting better, they will not get worse.