Prospects of

Trochus Shell Market

WHEN the Sydney merchant, Mr.

Don Reed, of the William E. Reed firm, visited New Guinea last month, he found that trochus fishers were in the dol drums. They could not get offers of more than £lOO to £l4O Austra lian per ton for their shell, al though the market in Sydney was reported to be around £2OO.

Mr. Reed says that he found that the chief reason for the “depres sion” in Samarai and Lae was that the shippers there had been sending their shell away unsorted and un graded. A condition of the Sydney quotation (which in August was £175 on wharf) is that the shell must be properly graded.

Labour in Sydney is extremely short. There simply are no men available for work like shell-sorting.

The sorting must be done before shipment, otherwise the shell will lie indefinitely in Sydney.

Mr. Reed says the trochus market is unsteady, with a dipwnward ten dency, owing to certain factors in fluencing the American buyers. But the green-snail market is steady, at about £l6O per ton, on wharf, Sydney.

So far as grading is concerned, Mr. Reed says that shell shippers can get all the information they need from the Customs offices in their Islands ports.

It is hoped that, as Japanese trade revives, the Japanese will resume button-making, and then purchases of shell for that purpose.