Aust, horticultural industry seeks help

Press, 12 June 1989, Page 16

Aust, horticultural industry seeks help

PA Sydney Australian horticultural industry leaders, striving to overcome sagging export receipts, have looked across the Tasman to learn how to reorganise their industry. Bad weather and a high Australian dollar have been blamed for the slump in Australian fruit and vegetable exports this financial year.

The managing director of the Australian Horticultural Corporation Mr David Goodman, said New Zealand’s experience had helped identify areas that Australia needed to address. He told a recent horticulture seminar in Tasmania that Australia was once the biggest apple and pear exporter in the southern hemisphere. In 1971 Australia exported eight million cartons of apples, while New Zealand exported only three million. Now New Zealand exported about 10 million cartons and Australia “won’t even manage a million this year.”

A.H.C. was set up last year to co-ordinate marketing for sectors of the horticultural industry that wish to join. So far it covers apples, pears and citrus fruit and soon the nursery sector is expected to join.

Mr Goodman listed the Australian industry’s problems as: unsatisfactory quality, inadequate commitment by producers to export, a production-

driven mentality to marketing, inadequate crop forecasting, poor shipping services, lack of industry communication, no single Australian brand identification for exports and reliance on forward sales as opposed to consignment selling.

He said that New Zealand — particularly the Apple and Pear Board — had resolved these problems.

Because the board was the only seller of New Zealand apples and pears and owned the product, it could charter ships for exporting, while the “multitude” of Australian exporters used Conference line ships which took nearly twice as long to reach European markets.

Once displayed in supermarkets overseas, New Zealand products were clearly advertised as being from New Zealand. Australian fruit cartons carried “Produce of Australia” labels, but once unpacked the fruit had only brand names and nothing to indicate it was from Australia.

“In Australia growers essentially cater for the domestic market and we’ve never gone to the export market and said ‘these are the varieties we grow at certain times of the year — how many do you require’?” Mr Goodman said.

“New Zealanders go to the marketplace and find out what the overseas importers want before growing it.” Earlier this year the

New Zealand board withdrew an application for a licence to export Australian Packham pears to Europe after opposition from Australian growers — even though the board would have achieved higher returns to the growers. Mr Goodman said the Apple and Pear Board has ended up selling some Australian pears through existing Australian licence-holders.

“They have approached the licence-holders saying they have buyers for the pears,” he said.

“I understand the board has sold 60,000 to 70,000 cartons of the pears so far.”

Total Australian pear exports were likely to be 1.2 million cartons for the season, he added. Although Australia’s fresh fruit and vegetable exports over all have shrunk in the last year, exports to New Zealand have not shown the same trend. For the six months ended December 31, Australia’s fruit and vegetable exports fell to sAustB2 million ($105.7 million) from sAustlO4 million ($134 million) for the same period in 1987. Its exports to New Zealand increased marginally for the same two periods from sAust9.s million ($12.2 million) to sAust9.7 million ($12.5 million). New’ Zealand exported $53.3 million of fruit and vegetables to Australia in the full year ended December 31.