Plea for effort to restore stonefruit confidence

Press, 20 July 1984, Page 18

Plea for effort to restore stonefruit confidence

A plea for a team effort to restore the confidence of Australian buyers in New Zealand stonefruit has been made by the chairman of the New Zealand Fruitgrowers’ Federation, Mr Peter Taylor. During a trip to Australia earlier this year, Mr Taylor visited fruit markets which were congested with smallsized, over-mature and often rotting New Zealand stonefruit, he told a seminar for Central Otago fruitgrowers at Alexandra recently. The reaction of Australian retailers was to shy away from fruit with little to no shelf life. Mr Taylor appealed to the industry to tackle the problem as a unified group, otherwise New Zealand’s opportunities to sell stonefruit to Australia and other world markets would be very limited. “But if we all work together to restore the confidence of overseas buyers, the opportunity that we’ve all quoted — $lOO million in overall annual export income by 1990 — will remain within our grasp.” By going alone, some people would succeed, but many others would fail, he said. Blame for the problems could not be apportioned to any one sector of the stonefruit industry. The blame was fairly and squarely on the industry as a whole. If growers, transporters and exporters started pitching the blame to and fro, the battle would be lost before it even started. Mr Taylor, together with M.A.F.’s regional field officer for the Hastings region, Mr Peter Johnston, visited the Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne markets in late February. Their visit was funded by the Stonefruit Industry through the New Zealand Fruitgrowers’ Federation. The orginal aim was to see if export grade stand-

ards were higher than the markets required and whether or not there was opportunity to reduce standards, particularly for the cosmetic defect of russetting. However, this proved a very minor issue in relation to the worrying discovery of mouldy, and rotting fruit. Reporting to over 100 Central Otago orchardists, Messrs Taylor and Johnston said all markets visited were congested with supplies of over mature and small-sized fruit. Many of the lines were suffering from prolonged storage and transit rot. Mr Taylor said they were looking at fruit of which the best was three weeks old and the worst nine weeks old. “And this fruit was still at the market end: It hadn’t yet reached the consumer or even the retailer.” Among the factors seen to be influencing the situation are: © New Zealand’s stonefruits exports were more than double that of last year, with exporters sending increased quantities of smaller sizes. © Following last season’s high prices for new Zealand stonefruit from the end of January onwards, both New Zealand exporters and Australian importers had presumed a similar trend this year and had cool-stored early harvested fruit supplies in anticipation. © Between exporters and importers withholding fruit, some varieties had been stored for up to four to six weeks. © A large proportion of the fruit was airfreighted, which appeared to create problems in maintaining required cool storage temperatures during transit periods. 0 It appeared that when the problems of forward maturity, transit and storage rots were recognised, many of these lines were placed on the market, which

from all accounts was under some pressure because of the range of fruit products available at the time of the year. Messrs Taylor and Johnston also observed numerous instances of packaging problems. Many lines had been brought in and out of storage so often that the lids and bottoms of cardboard trays were starting to collapse with the build-up in condensation. This is damaging the fruit and helping rot set in. Poor stacking of trays on pallets, inadequate strapping around the pallets and overloading of pallets had led to trajr crushing, fruit damage and rot. This highlighted the need to make everyone in the industry aware of the limitations of cardboard trays, Mr Taylor said. Messrs Taylor and Johnston said no lowering of export grading standards could be considered until importer confidence had been re-established in New Zealand stonefruit. • Until the industry had concrete answers to stonefruit storage questions, it had first and foremost to shorten the time span between the fruit’s departure from the orchard and its arrival in the marketplace. Further research into post-harvest treatment, to prolong stonefruit storage life, is recommemded by Messrs Taylor and Johnston. ■ Other recommendations include an in-depth review of present transportation systems, the setting of a minimum compaction level for all export cardboard trays, and the introduction of a national system of date coding and fruit presentation in trays. Major decisions based on the recommendations of Messrs Taylor and Johnston will be made at the annual conference of the New Zealand Fruitgrowers’ Federation stonefruit sector in Hastings next month.