Japan kiwifruit bonanza?

Press, 22 April 1986, Page 26

Japan kiwifruit bonanza?

NZJN Tokyo High Japanese kiwifruit prices could push the return from New Zealand kiwifruit exports to Japan this season to more than $l4O million, exceeding the value of lamb, mutton and beef shipments. Japanese kiwifruit importers will be sounded out on prices for the New Zealand crop today, in meetings in Auckland with New Zealand exporters and members of the New Zealand Kiwifruit Authority. Representatives from about 15 Japanese fruitimporting companies are converging on Auckland for the pre-season meeting. They have already been told New Zealand is planning to send 9.3 million trays (about 33,000 tonnes) of kiwifruit to Japanese markets, about 27 per cent more than the 1985 season’s volume. In spite of earlier fears that the Japanese market could not sustain high kiwifruit prices, Californian kiwifruit and domestic Japanese kiwifruit have continued to register wholesale prices of up to $2B a tray. Prices have been so high that Japan’s own plans to export more kiwifruit to Europe collapsed earlier this year when growers found it was more profitabble to sell to local markets. Japanese growers in-

tended to export about 640 tonnes of kiwifruit to Europe between January and April, but managed only about 53 tonnes. “Less than 1.0 per cent of the target was reached because of high local prices,” a Japanese trade journal reported. Japanese trade sources say New Zealand proposes a free-on-board price of about $15.50 a tray for the first kiwifruit shipment in the container ship Aotea, leaving New Zealand about May 6. If a price near that level holds for the whole season, total exports from Japan would return more than $l4O million. New Zealand meat exports — lamb, mutton, beef — to Japan, returned $137 million in the June, 1985, year, and with much higher overheads. Trade sources say the most serious problem facing New Zealand kiwifruit exports is storage capacity at cramped Japanese ports, designed for rapid exports but slow in processing imports. The ports are not geared to handle the huge volume of fresh fruit New Zealand plans to send and the problem is made worse by Japanese quarantine inspections and fumigation of most New Zealand kiwifruit. —Copyright, N.Z. Japan News