[?]Ukl Anders Buy 10/- Pineapples

[?]ore Fruit from [?]raway Places

From Hawaii

By J. P. Shortall

If September was Banana Month in Auckland, NZ, then November was Pineapple Month. For just as September was the first occasion in 40 years that bananas in bunches had arrived at that port ( PIM .

October, p. 125), November saw the arrival of a shipment of pineapples from Hawaii, first from that source in 25 years.

ND what a shipment. Here L again was an example of what can, and must, be done when ere is competition.

Increasing quantities of pine iples have been coming to New aland in recent years from the >ok Islands during November jcember-January—but like most [and fruit reaching New Zealand, Dm whatever source, each ship ent is full of blemished, mis apen fruit, unattractively pro fited, and very frequently rotten the heart.

The idea of attracting the stomer or of establishing a good

name for the shipper never enters into the deal. There’s no need for it. Always chronically short of tropical fruit, the New Zealand consumer glumly accepts what offers.

So it was with pleasure as well as with pain—due to the price— that this cool-store shipment of 500 dozen pineapples from Hawaii was welcomed. And this was marketing, American style.

The fruit —smooth-skinned, green tops unsullied, nothing but the best—came in two sizes, and packed, like beer, in cardboard cartons.

Each carton, attractively coloured

and decorated, bearing the shipper’s name, contained one dozen fruit, each in its own compartment, neatly standing on end, and all the same size in any one carton.

Did someone say, “We Islands

shippers can’t afford all that hocus”?

Well, the answer to that is that these 500 cartons sold like hot cakes in the city markets at 65/to 72/- each, depending on size of fruit.

There is no control on the retail price, but the Chinese green-grocer down the road was unloading his at 2/- per pound without a great deal of trouble. Which seems to show that a lot of consumers are prepared to pay big money for a product to which the producer is not ashamed to put his name.

As we reported at the time, Auckland consumers opposed sale of Ecuadorean bananas by the “hand” and the retailers toed the line by selling to individual require ments. With the pineapple ship ment there was similar co-opera tion.

Some were selling by the wedge, cut longitudinally in to the centre, cheese-style. This would suggest that there might be an even readier market for similar high-quality pineapples of smaller size—like the Cook Islands fruit.

The price seems high, but it is not so much higher when you find that two out of three of your Cook Islands pines, for one reason or another bruising, faulty picking methods, faulty packing, or perhaps wrong stowage aboard ship—turn out to be rotten at heart.

Maybe the New Zealand fruit consumer does have to accept what the Islands send him at present;

but it could be that with steadily improving refrigerated shipping connections with overseas countries, he may demand something a little better than what has been tossed at him for so long—and if this better overseas product is forth coming the Islands shipper may have to pull his socks up at long last.

POST-SCRIPT: Aucklanders are enjoying finest white Spanish grapes this month. They arrived in top condition, having been packed in powdered cork in small barrels, each containing about 22 lbs.

Some 2,500 barrels arrived in the first shipment, and 10,000 more are on the way. The retail price of these is 4/6d per pound.