Kiwifruit industry soon earning $150M?

Press, 30 June 1982, Page 3

Kiwifruit industry soon earning $150M?

PA , Auckland The kiwifruit industry will earn more overseas exchange and employ more people than an aluminium smaller, said the managing director of the New Zealand Kiwifruit Authority, Dr Donald Brash, yesterday. Opening the Horticultural Trade Fair at Auckland, Dr Brash said the proposed aluminium smelter at Aramoana was expected to earn about SISOM in foreign exchange and employ about 1000 people. In 1981 its cost was estimated at S7OOM, he said.

The cost of setting up the kiwifruit industry would not approach S7OOM, and by 1984 it would be earning more than SISOM in overseas earnings and employing more than 6000 people, Dr Brash said. Over the last decade. New

Zealand had encountered many serious economic problems, Dr Brash said. These included an almost total absence of real growth, large balance-of-payments deficits and a rate of inflation which, in recent years, had been substantially higher than its major trading partners. "Amidst all the gloom, some success stories have shone out, and none has shone more brightly than the horticulture industry.” Kiwifruit exports had-in-creased 30-fold in those 10 years. The latest Government statistics showed that from 1974 to 1980 the area planted in apples increased 15 per cent,-oranges 58 per cent, strawberries 59 per cent, tangelos 84 per cent, tamarillos 89 per cent, boysenberries 312 per cent, avocados 553 per cent, black

currants 824 per cent, and feijoas 960 per cent. “Commercial plantings of macadamia and pecari trees have been made for the first time; growers are experimenting with cherimoyas and babacos; and the waiting list for plants of the desirable varieties of non-as-tringent persimmons — regarded by many people as New Zealand's next kiwifruit — is well into the 1984 season” Dr Brash said New Zealand had suddenly discovered a use for land that was both internationally efficient and likely to lead to the employment of a great many i people. “I believe that the Government' has a major responsibility to create the right kind of economic climate if horticulture is to continue to flourish.”