Mr. McCauley: What would be the retail sale price?
A Member: Yes.
Mr. McCauley: Well, the cellophaning of walnuts is quite an expensive proposition. We will say right now the kernels are worth 70 cents a pound. The cellophaner has to add a dime a pound to that price, so he figures his cost at 80 cents and the cost of cellophane, and he sells that merchandise so that he makes a 15 per cent profit. Let me see if I can tell you, a two-ounce bag—
Mr. Mullins: It sells for from 18 cents to 25 cents.
Mr. McCauley: Yes, 18 cents in the chain stores. An 8-ounce package at A & P in Chicago will sell for 59 or 69 cents. I have forgotten now just what it is. I can't keep these prices in my mind, although I will tell you this now. If any of you ever come to Chicago, I have an experimental plant in Chicago. If you could remember McCauley, it's "McCauley Company," or "McCauley Machinery Company," and in that plant I also have a new machine for bagging nuts, cellophane bagging. It makes the bag, fills it and seals it in one operation, and we have operated that machine at the rate of 100 bags per minute, 2-ounce or 6-ounce, it doesn't make any difference. The only trouble is the people couldn't handle the bags that fast, so we had to cut it down to 58 a minute. It's quite an operation, and at this time it is an experimental operation. But I would be more than pleased to have any of you drop in on me in Chicago. If I am not there someone in my organization will be glad to show you, if you tell them what you came for.
I have a "California" walnut, or Persian, as you call it. I was much surprised to see all these samples of walnuts down here. I have a walnut shelling plant in Chicago, I do at this time. Maybe when you get there it will be a pecan shelling plant, or maybe it will be a Macadamia nut plant. How many of you people have ever heard of Macadamia nuts? (Several hands raised.) More than I thought for. Well, we are working on a plant to shell Macadamias now. Of course, that is a tropical nut, grown chiefly in Hawaii and Australia. The Australian nut is not nearly as good as the Hawaiian nut. But to those of you who are not familiar with the nut, I have given it to any number of people and asked for their reaction, and some said it tasted like a filbert, others said it tasted like cocoanut, and the third one named was Brazil nut. So it's a very pleasant nut to eat, but very, very expensive.
Dr. Moss: I live in Williamsburg in Whitley County not far from you, and we have no market there for black walnuts at all and got quite a lot of them there. I wonder if it would be practical to have a collection center.
Mr. Mullins: It certainly would. In the southeastern part of Texas we have one.
Dr. MacDaniels: A question, Mr. McCauley. You said that you are able to recover about 11 per cent in the cracking plant on the average, I think you said 10 to 11.7 for ordinary run quality. Now, if you had walnuts that would run 25 to 28 per cent kernel, how much would your processing plants recover out of that, I am just-wondering?
Mr. McCauley: Well, I would like to say two per cent less than the hand-cracked weight. In other words, if you had a total, hand-cracking total kernel content of 25 per cent, I would like to say 23, but I think that is just a little bit strong. In Tom's early processing of black walnut kernels at Renfro Valley his first average was 16 per cent on wild nuts. I don't know where he got those nuts. They must have been Thomas variety. But as he told me today, he is down to 10.7.