Chinese counterfeiters have been accused of attempting to pass off domestically grown citrus as Australian in order to earn higher prices in the market.
Speaking to radio journalists on Thursday, Citrus Australia’s market manager Andrew Harty said a recent increase in demand for Australian mandarins and oranges – of which around 18,000 tonnes were shipped to China in 2014 – had prompted a surge in deliberate mislabelling.
“What is particularly alarming to us is where we see fruit that has been dipped in a dye and we know these dyes are quite toxic,” he told ABC News.
“The colour is incredibly artificial, so it will be this glowingly deep, orangey-red colour.”
According to Harty, the counterfeiters are managing to attract premium rates for the falsely labelled citrus, with some of them allegedly even managing to export the fruit to other parts of Asia.
Meanwhile, Ian Shepherd of Queensland-based citrus supplier Gaypak, a major exporter to China, told ABC News he had seen first-hand evidence of his own branded cartons being copied.
“I know it was counterfeited… because of spelling mistakes and [the] street address being wrong,” he said.
“If they put our logo on local fruit and there is [a chemical residue] issue, the ramifications could be monumental.”
As reflected in the Comtrade chart below,Australia has seen a dramatic increase in the volume of citrus exported to China over the past couple of years.
The country's citrus sales in China were worth US$30m in the year to September 2014.
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