KEY POINTS:
New Zealand apples are expected to regain access to the Japanese market soon, which could inject some sweetness into a sector embroiled in a bitter impasse over exports to Australia.
Pipfruit New Zealand chief executive Peter Beaven is not hopeful a last-ditch meeting this week between transtasman trade and agriculture ministers aimed at hastening the export of New Zealand apples to Australia will bear fruit, but calls movement on the Japanese front a promising development.
With a federal election looming, Australian politicians are stalling on the details of allowing New Zealand apple imports despite the decision to end an 85-year ban, and New Zealand is expected to initiate action against Australia at the World Trade Organisation if progress is not made this week.
However, negotiations with Japan were almost concluded and were expected to allow the first shipments next season, Beaven said.
"We've been locked out of Japan up until now for the same reason we've been locked out of Australia," he said, referring to the claim by Australia and Japan that their bans on New Zealand and US imports were to prevent the spread of a disease called fireblight.
Around 18 months ago, New Zealand officials sought a review of restrictions on its apple exports to Japan, in the wake of a US win against Japan at the World Trade Organisation, Beaven said.
The WTO had ruled mature fruit could not transmit fireblight, but Japan had continued to impose unviable phytosanitary restrictions.
These were so harsh that New Zealand had effectively not been able to export to Japan for many years.
"For the last six or seven years no New Zealand apples have been exported to Japan, even though there was a protocol in place to do so," he said. "It was quite simply completely economically non-viable under those conditions."
Beaven said while fireblight was not expected to be an issue in the final protocols, codling moth - which did not exist in Japan and whose detection in exports to Taiwan earlier this year temporarily suspended trade - could be a sticking point.
But he added: "We expect to be able to begin trial shipments next season."
While Japan was a large market for other horticultural produce from New Zealand such as kiwifruit, Japan's taste for much larger than conventional apples meant it would never be a huge market for our apples, unlike Australia, which could be worth $50 million, Beaven warned.
He said tariffs on exports to Japan were around 10 per cent, but hoped free-trade negotiations would bring that to zero.
The Korean market - "one of the wealthier countries in Asia" - was the apple sector's next target, with its population of 80 million promising a significant market.
"Korea tends to go where Japan goes," Beaven said. He expected the sector to negotiate protocols with Korea in the "not too distant future".
