The consignment consisted of 20 boxes, each containing 264 eggs, packed in oat husks, and each egg wrapped in a piece of grease-proof paper. The eggs themselves had been dipped in some preparation, but this can be avoided in future. Spring eggs - September and October - will stand a very much longer journey than eggs that are laid in the New Zealand summer or autumn, consequently there is no need for Dominion exporters to go to the trouble of dipping the eggs in any preparation whatever.
It would be quite sufficient to store them in a cool chamber; and, also, if packed in cardboard fillers in boxes each containing 30 dozen, they would carry and travel very much better. The packing of the consignment in question was quite unsuitable for the London market. The majority of the eggs shipped to London are packed in clean white wood-wool in long cases of 1440 each. These cases carry with them, according to the terms of the London egg market, 60 eggs per long case, which is termed the London allowance to cover any excess breakages. Canadians and Americans pack their eggs in boxes of 360, and use the cardboard fillers, in which case they save the usual London allowance, as the quarter cases so packed are always sold net. That is the full count, and there is no allowance at all.
The boxes from Dunedin were heavy and clumsy and altogether unsuitable.
The American box is a good model, and is made to contain 180 each side, with three dozen eggs on each layer. The quality of the New Zealand eggs was very fine. They came over in the cheese chamber in a temperature of a little under 50 degrees, and were as new when they arrived in London as it is possible to get eggs at this time of the year with the exception of those direct from the nest. There is a good trade to be done from New Zealand in eggs if the farmers are able to get their production here during the months of December and January, when prices are at their highest in London. Spring eggs from the Dominion could be sold here as strictly fresh. The Dunedin eggs were a fair size, namely 14lb per 120.
They were white in colour, whereas eggs with a little colour are always more attractive to the London trader.
• Captain A. D. Blair, son of Mr John Blair, Abbotsford, has received from the Turkish Government the decoration of the fourth order of medjidie. This order was instituted in 1852, and conferred, after the Crimean war, to a considerable extent on British officers. - ODT, 5.3.1912.
