David Carter

New Zealand Minister of Agriculture David Carter has reiterated his support for Zespri's monopoly on the country's kiwifruit exports and has called upon exporter Turners & Growers (T&G) to work with the marketer to develop sales of new kiwifruit cultivars.

T&G has argued that deregulating New Zealand kiwifruit exports would benefit the industry and encourage innovation.

Speaking on New Zealand radio, Mr Carter denied he had refused to take sides on the debate.

'I'm not sitting on the fence at all,' he told the On The Field programme. 'I'm persuaded by what the growers want and, overwhelmingly, the kiwifruit growers are saying, they're endorsing the current system.'

Mr Carter revealed he had met with T&G chairman Tony Gibbs and told him the Government would look at any case presented that showed a significant number of kiwifruit growers wanted a change to the current structure.

'But to date, Mr Gibbs has not been able to get a significant number of New Zealand kiwifruit growers on side to his proposal,' Mr Carter confirmed. 'The day that the kiwifruit growers aren't happy with the performance of Zespri, they will be looking at alternatives. But I just don't feel that's where the domestic growers of kiwifruit are at the moment.'

Asked why individual companies and growers shouldn't be allowed to export their own cultivars under their own banner, Mr Carter said he hoped Zespri and T&G could work more collaboratively on developing sales of new varieties.

'I suspect that that's where I would hope it would go. Instead of fighting from the trenches, Mr Gibbs and Zespri would sit around and talk a bit more and see whether there is a commercial opportunity associated with the red that Mr Gibbs claims he's produced,' he suggested.

'Bear in mind, Zespri themselves are also working on a red,' he added. 'Now I'm not sure at what stage that is to be commercialised, but Mr Gibbs and Turners & Growers, I don't believe, have unique access to a red kiwifruit.'

Mr Carter also said he was sceptical about how successful a purported move by T&G to push forward a WTO investigation of Zespri might be.

'Listen, these sort of complaints are made to the WTO all the time,' he said. 'As I understand it from `NZ Trade Minister` Tim Groser, they get a large number of very frivolous complaints that go nowhere.'

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