Cherry growers say they have made a breakthrough after years of work to secure access to the West Australian market - only a week before the end of the picking season.
"This new access is a breakthrough for us and has taken three long and hard years," said Summerfruit New Zealand
chairman Basil Goodman.
While New Zealand cherries are exported to the other states of Australia, they have been banned from Western Australia.
Summerfruit New Zealand manager Marie Dawkins, of Cromwell, said the Australian state had continually turned down access requests on the grounds that the state had no signs of brown rot, a disease which sometimes occurs in New Zealand.
But once the disease - one of the most common in stonefruit - was acknowledged several years ago to already be in West Australia, they began making progress.
"We had been working on access into Western Australia since 1998, and as soon as brown rot was discovered we've been pushing our case," Dawkins said. "It has been quite a political process and we've been working alongside Agriculture Minister Jim Sutton.
"It's a pity this news has come through just as we're a week away from the end of the cherry season, but we're not going to quibble about that."
Cherry production in Central Otago was expanding and improved access to overseas markets was needed to absorb the increased production from more than 320ha of orchards. The best year for cherry exports so far had been about 750 tonnes and growers expected production to be up by 30 per cent to 40 per cent this year.
- NZPA
