Fruitgrowers take hard line on rivals

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON

Apple growers fearing deregulation of their industry by stealth plan to sue for compensation if the new export permits process fails a legal test.

The chairman of Nelson-based United Fruit, Bill Lynch, said the despondent but resolute group had prepared a nine-point action plan at a meeting in Motueka on Tuesday night.

The pipfruit lobby group, set up to fight the previous Government's bid to deregulate the marketing board, last month re-convened to try to stop the new, independent, permits committee from approving any more export permits.

Yesterday, Enza executive chairman John McCliskie said the company had received limited information on Tuesday from the committee outlining which regions would be targeted by independent exporters granted permits to market 1.2 million trays.

The information did not show whether the fruit was going to existing Enza customers, though the company did know 300,000 trays were to be supplied to one of its customers, British supermarket chain Tesco, he said.

He expected the rival exports to cause Enza "serious bother."

Mr Lynch said the new system had thrown the industry into "complete disarray" and something had to be done about it.

"We feel it is extremely serious. The industry is on a knife-edge," he said.

United Fruit would call for the committee to cease granting permits immediately to allow for an assessment of those already granted, and a review of the committee's regulations, Mr Lynch said.

It also planned to send a delegation to parliament to get assurances the Government still backed single-desk selling, and would seek legal opinions - with a view to suing for compensation - to establish whether the permits committee had been given factual information and its decision-making had been sound.

The committee's regulations mean any permits it grants must be complementary to Enza.

Mr McCliskie said Enza doubted that could be the case if exports were going to its customers, "but until you get the information, we're sitting here in the dark still."

But a new process agreed between Enza and the committee should give the company enough information on new permit applications to enable Enza to give proper comment.

"We haven't been able to up until now. For instance, we had an application the other day that was going to Germany [to a company] who the applicant said we weren't even supplying. It turns out this customer is one of our major customers in Germany [to whom] we are supplying more than 200,000 cartons."

Mr McCliskie said it was too early to call for a review of the committee's regulations because the effects of its decisions, made and yet to be made, were unknown.

"The permits committee is operating under a lot of pressure, too. Our overriding concern is that the process meets the test of the regulations. To an outsider it appears it might not have met that test but I can't make a judgment on that because we don't have enough detail."

Apple harvesting is due to start in the North Island this week and the first container ship is expected to leave New Zealand late next week for markets such as Asia and North America.

"We are getting under way as early as we can to make sure we can get in and grab shelf space from our competitors," Mr McCliskie said.