Apple growers to be compensated for the high dollar

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Turners & Growers is to pay growers of Jazz apples $1 per tray as an additional one-off payment to compensate for the impact of the high New Zealand dollar.

Turners & Growers managing director Jeff Wesley said the company was showing its commitment to the apple variety in a challenging season and he called on the variety's owner, Plant and Food Research, to match the Turners & Growers payment from royalties it received on Jazz.

"This is a fantastic variety, it's recognised as one of the best in the world, but like many export sectors, apple growers are taking a hit with the exchange rate. We want to show our commitment to Jazz growers and must all work together to get through this challenging season," Wesley said.

Jazz was the highest priced selling apple in most markets but New Zealand growers were not benefiting from that.

The additional payment will be included in this season's final payment to New Zealand Jazz growers on November 25. About 1.5 million cartons of Jazz were exported this season.

"Growers of Jazz in Europe - whose selling season is just beginning - are seeing premium returns because they are not being hard-hit by the exchange rate like their New Zealand counterparts. Growers here have backed Jazz and we are standing behind them to assist through this challenging period," said Wesley.

The NZ dollar has been flirting with the US80c level, which it has traded above only twice since floating, while the Australian dollar has reached parity against a weak US dollar.

The NZ dollar fell to US77.70c by late morning today from US78.35c at 9am after Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) governor Alan Bollard said the domestic economy was rebalancing, but if the NZ dollar remained relatively high it would make that difficult to achieve.

TD Securities said it was misguided for Dr Bollard to take credit for a move lower in the currency today as the Australian dollar and euro had also nosedived.

TD Securities said both the currencies were lower on speculation of an imminent Chinese interest rate hike.

Dr Bollard also questioned how recent data, including employment and retail trade, had been viewed, although he also said the strength of the NZ dollar was being driven by much larger international moves.

In the past couple of weeks financial markets had "taken it into their head" to interpret some New Zealand data more strongly than the RBNZ might have done, Dr Bollard said.

"If there's some misinterpretation of New Zealand data, as we fell there might have been over the past couple of weeks, then we'd look for the market to correct that."

The RBNZ would be talking further about the matter in its next monetary policy statement in a month's time.

- NZPA