Anger over fish ‘dumping’

Press, 14 April 1984, Page 16

Anger over fish ‘dumping’

NZPA staff correspondent Sydney West Australian fishermen and canners will meet next month to push for dumping action against imports of canned New Zealand kahawai which they say is plundering the Australian market. Ironically, the fish, known and sold in Australia as Australian salmon, is being prepared and canned to a recipe given to a Nelson company by a West Australian canning company three years ago when local stocks were short. Now the New Zealand product has taken an estimated 45 per cent of the Australian market, valued at sAusts.2 million ($7.4 million). Australian producers have had to cut their prices to match the competition, and returns to fishermen have been slashed by more than a third.

What the Australians want, according to spokesmen, is for the New Zealanders to raise their prices, make a bigger profit, an dallow the Australians to do so as well.

Fishermen, have already met the state Fisheries Minister, Mr David Evans, and he has agreed to chair a meeting to be held by midMay, at which the fishermen, canners, and state government officials will decide whether they have a case for a dumping action.

The executive officer of the Fishing Industry Council in Perth, Mr Graeme Stewart, said yesterday the problem went back three to four years, when to meet a local shortage, a West Australian canner gave a New Zealand company the recipe for preparing kahawai so that stocks in Australia could be maintained. The kahawai is a subspecies of a fish known in Australia as Australian salmon and predominantly caught off West Australia. From a position where western fishermen provided about 70 per cent of the 4 million cans of the fish sold in Australia, with the rest coming from the eastern states, the share has dropped to about 55 per cent, with New Zealanders supplying the rest.

The New Zealand product sold for about $1.20 a can, 30c below the local product, and Mr Stewart said that after initially trying to keep returns to fishermen up, the canning companies have had to cut them to keep competitive. “The fish is coming in from a big Nelson company which is using its own purse seiner while the canners here buy the fish of local fishermen,” he said. “The New Zealand company can buy the tin for its cans at any price it likes wherever it is cheapest, but our canners have to pay a set rate.

“That helps make them cheaper than us anyway, but then on top of that the New Zealand company gets export incentives through their tax which makes them even cheaper,” said Mr Stewart. “The returns to fishermen here have gone down to $3OO a tonne and at that price they will go broke,” he said. “Fishing now is only feasible if they can get big catches and there is nothing much else here apart from

a bit of herring. They have got mortgages, wives and kids and no dough.” Mr Stewart said the New Zealand product was sold in cans almost identical to the West Australian product, right down to the brand name which was King Salmon for the imparted product and King Sound for the local fish.

“They are not doing anything illegal, but we wish they would put their prices up,” he said.

The sentiment was shared by the managing director of one of the two local canneries, Mr Rodney Hunt, whosaid the prices to fishermenhad been cut from $475 three years ago to $3OO as the companies moved to meet the New Zealand competition. “The New Zealand companies get numerous incentives like export incentives and development grants that are turned into cash grants if performance is met, that are not enjoyed in Australia,” he said. “The market has been depressed by the New Zealand action,” said Mr Hunt.