Kiwifruit exports

Press, 17 May 1989, Page 16

Kiwifruit exports

Sir,—Network News of May 2 had a piece on the booming export of New Zealand organic food, predicting an increasing demand for New Zealand clean, green produce. Unfortunately, this is not the case for kiwifruit, one of the most clearly identifiable New Zealand products. The Kiwifruit Marketing Board, a quasi-governmental monopoly, has restricted organic growers’ access to this potentially lucrative market, using the excuse that the phyto-sanitary regulations of the importing countries cannot be met. But many countries (the U.K., the Netherlands, West Germany, among others) will accept New Zealand organic kiwifruit. The fruit would be separately packed and marked with our internationally recognised label, Bio-Gro, and sent to specific buyers. In these troubled times for the New Zealand kiwifruit industry it seems unwise to impede growers willing to develop new markets. Perhaps the K.M.B. would like to explain its position publicly?—Yours, etc. R. CRUM. May 4, 1989. [The research and development manager of the Kiwifruit Marketing Board, Mr R. Martin, replies: "The New Zealand Kiwifruit Marketing Board is not a quasi-governmental monopoly intent on restricting organic growers’ access to potentially lucrative markets. It is an international marketing organisation owned and controlled by kiwifruit growers and charged (by statute) with gaining the best possible return for these growers on highly competitive world markets. The board does not have an aversion to organic kiwifruit nor wish to inhibit the activities of organic growers at all. It does have a paramount function of successfully marketing many millions of trays of export-quality fruit and the practicalities and realities of this exercise, preclude, for the present at least, organic kiwifruit. The fruit would have to be segmented and segregated in the packhouse because of differing quarantine requirements

overseas. It would also necessitate exporting the organic fruit in containers and the logistics and cost of packhouse segregation and containerisation cannot be justified at present. Europe is now regarded as a single market for kiwifruit, in terms of shipping and distribution, and with the variation in quarantine requirements, separating and redirecting organic fruit on landing in Europe is not practicable or justifiable (in terms of cost and return). Probably 99.9 per cent of organic fruit produced in the world today is consumed in the country of origin because of quarantine regulations. The board does not have a rigid attitude and discussions are taking place on a government-to-government basis to continually review the quarantine requirements.”]