The New Zealand avocado industry needs to find creative solutions to its challenges in order to take hold of opportunities, visiting experts say.
Russell Ballard, independent chairman of the Plant Market Access Council, and Ian Proudfoot, KPMG global sector leader for agribusiness, were in Tauranga this week speaking at the New Zealand and Australian Avocado Growers conference.
Dr Ballard said New Zealand's food and beverages manufacturers needed to triple their export returns to meet the Government's goal of increasing exports to 40 per cent of GDP.
Production capacity issues such as the biannual bearing tendency of New Zealand avocados and the wide range of productivity levels among growers could be solved, Dr Ballard said, however the real challenge would come in trying to move the export market away from its traditional Australian dependence to other countries.
"There's two types of markets. There's the real affluent markets like Japan and Singapore where you can really go after trying to get premium prices for your products, and then there's the emerging markets with large and developing middle classes like Indonesia, Thailand and, of course, China," he said.