New Zealand has been ranked first overall in the World Apple Report's rankings, which measure success in 22 categories. It came top in financial and market factors and third in both production efficiency categories and in infrastructure and inputs. Chile was placed second and France a more distant third.

The Netherlands topped the chart for production efficiency, which measured factors such as percent change in production in recent years, percent of production of newer varieties and average yield per hectare.

Chile came top on infrastructure and inputs, which took into account adequacy of storage, modern packing facilities, distribution, marketing, and land, labour and water availability as well as input costs.

Financial and market factors included distance to markets, average export prices (for 1999) inflation and interest rates last year, product quality control and percent of crop exported.

The UK was placed 14th overall, the US sixth, Italy seventh, the Netherlands eighth and South Africa 11th.

However the report, published by US-based Belrose, warns that high ranked countries should not get complacent, perhaps especially given recent deregulation of the NZ industry. 'Continuing changes both within their industries and in the food distribution system will require them to continue to strengthen every aspect of their apple industry,' warned the report.

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