New Zealand kiwifruit growers are losing millions of dollars through black-market fruit undercutting legitimate exports to Asian and Middle Eastern markets.
Much of the fruit is being transshipped through Australia, to which New Zealand exporters have free access.
Kiwifruit exporter Zespri International - which effectively controls the export of New Zealand fruit
- is on the trail of the racketeers.
The general manager for Zespri's North American and developing markets, Bob Shaw, said black-market fruit had been found in Mauritius, China, Korea, Singapore, Dubai and on Reunion Island.
"Asia is a very important and very good market and this fruit is coming in undercutting the pricing with poorer quality fruit," Mr Shaw said. "We need to be aware of who [the black marketeers] are because they are ripping off their fellow growers."
Tauranga growers alone are losing about $4 million a year.
Te Puke orchardist Malcolm Cartwright, a member of Kiwifruit Growers, an industry watchdog, said: "It's important that we show discipline and control as we go into high-paying Asian markets to get the development we want. There is a danger that we lose our reputation worldwide if the quality is less than excellent."
Fruitgrowers Federation vice-president Andrew Fenton said black marketeers were wrecking the industry by undercutting the single desk, co-operative aspect of Zespri. Some of the black market product originated from wholesale markets in Australia - to which any New Zealand grower could export outside Zespri - or it was transshipped through Australia without being offloaded there.
It was not illegal to export lower grade kiwifruit to Australia but the industry believed that some of it "did not come off the ship, it is just sent on".
Industry sources said it was still possible for some New Zealand fruit to be bought in an Australian wholesale market without the exporter being aware it was to be transshipped.
It was also legal for an exporter to sell to an Australian buyer in the knowledge that the fruit would be re-exported.
But marketing laws would be broken if a ship carrying fruit from Tauranga to Sydney landed the cargo in Singapore.
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry officials are responsible for prosecutions in such cases.
- NZPA
