Enza fast-track calls dismissed

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON

Agriculture Minister Jim Sutton has rejected calls from within his own party to fast-track deregulation of apple marketer Enza.

Labour's Primary Industries Council chairman, Leo Mangos, has called for immediate removal of Enza's almost sole right to export the $600 million apple crop now it is run by investment firms Guinness Peat Group and FR Partners.

He predicted small growers, unable to exercise control of Enza despite their majority shareholding, would have returns cut as the big companies cherry-picked high-priced markets at the expense of selling the whole crop.

Mr Mangos has promised fireworks at Labour's November conference if the Government "stood idly by" and allowed the industry to self-destruct.

But Mr Sutton said there was little scope for speeding up deregulation.

"We need to have information back from the marketplace as to how the first season goes under the new regime."

Some people might be pleased to "do the corporates in the eye" but the companies would have valid reason to complain of unfair treatment, and not being given the opportunity to demonstrate the service they could provide the industry, he said.

However, the main reason for sticking to a timetable of reviewing industry regulations no earlier than 2001-2002 was because Enza was still owned by a grower majority which had voted for single-desk selling, Mr Sutton said.

"They got what they voted for," he said.

"I suspect they did not anticipate ownership going to a couple of corporates but the main reason they like a single desk is that they believe it maximises the price of the product."

Mr Sutton said it would "be adding injury to insult" to remove the single desk now.

He believed he had across-the-board support for seeing how Enza developed before contemplating further radical change.

However, Mr Sutton was critical of Enza's decision to raise the standards for apples it would accept for export, which had the dual effect of reducing the crop it had to sell, and cutting returns to growers.

He described the ploy as "one of the scandals of the industry" especially while many were confident there were markets for smaller apples.

Meanwhile, Mr Sutton said he hoped that access to the lucrative Australian market, denied for 75 years, would soon be realised.

A draft report from the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service on the risk of New Zealand imports bringing the fungal disease fireblight across the Tasman is expected to be released after the Olympics.

It is tipped to impose only minimal quarantine conditions on New Zealand growers.