KEY POINTS:
A moth larva which has disrupted New Zealand's $40 million apple export industry to Taiwan came from an orchard in Hawkes Bay.
Taiwanese media reported the discovery meant a shipment of 1029 boxes of apples had been stopped at the border and sent back to New Zealand for destruction.
Pipfruit New Zealand chief executive Peter Beaven said one codling moth larva, a pest in Taiwan, was discovered in a fuji apple in Taiwan last week.
The apple came from an orchard in Hawkes Bay, he said. He would not identify the orchard.
On Friday, Biosecurity New Zealand received formal notification that the discovery had prompted the Taiwanese Government to stop all apple imports from New Zealand, Mr Beaven said.
Only exports which were already on the water or were loaded by today would be accepted by the Taiwanese authorities.
Biosecurity New Zealand would carry out trace-back procedures at the orchard and packing house to try to identify how the moth had got through, Mr Beaven said.
Exporters were already negotiating with alternative markets in the US and Asia, he said.
"But they will be a little bit cautious because they don't know how long we're going to be suspended from supply to Taiwan," he said.
"Taiwan's a good paying market and our exporters have got programmes there and they don't want to get locked out of those programmes, so we're hoping to get a resumption of trade as soon as possible."
Mr Beaven could not confirm Taiwanese reports that the entire shipment would be sent back to New Zealand and destroyed.
New Zealand was about a third to a half of the way through the supply season to Taiwan, worth about $40 million annually, he said.
"It causes a pretty worrying time while we try to get this resolved."
The ban could have been avoided by a better trade agreement, he said.
The US, which also exported apples to Taiwan, had an agreement with Taiwan that they could have two discoveries of codling moth and no suspension until they had a third.
"We're on one strike ... It's something we've been trying to address for some time to try to get better terms of trade," Mr Beaven said.
"You look at it with the advantage of hindsight and you're sitting on a time bomb potentially and we've been sitting on that time bomb for years and years and years and finally it's happened."
It was the first time there had been a codling moth interception from New Zealand in 20 years of trade, he said. There was no timeframe for the ban.
The trace-back process, which Taiwanese officials had been invited to attend, should take two or three days.
"We've got nothing to hide. We'd rather do this in an open process. We're not trying to conceal anything."
