From the House - Stuart Nash: FTA duty free deal a recipe for local apple growers' recovery

Stuart Nash says a new Fair Trade deal with the UK is a recipe for success for Hawke's Bay apple growers. And he also has a recipe for apple pie. Photo / NZME

Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness, wrote novelist Jane Austen to her sister in 1815.

I want to use this column to celebrate our apple growers and exporters, because we have managed to secure an historic trade milestone. I hope it will bring much domestic and commercial happiness!

There are plenty of people in Hawke's Bay who have fond memories of heritage apple varieties. While modern cultivars like Envy and Jazz and Eve and Pink Lady seem to dominate the supermarket shelves, many will still go searching for a Golden Delicious, Granny Smith or a Bramley, or perhaps a Royal Gala from the 1930s or Braeburn from the 1950s.

A report in the Waipawa Mail newspaper in 1919 said the Hawke's Bay A&P Show was introducing new classes of competition in the apple section.

The A&P Show was encouraging entries for dessert apples, export apples, and for best specimen of Delicious, Jonathan and Sturmer apples. The newspaper declared that "the magnificent display of fruit is one of the leading features of the show".

But those with really long memories may be able to reach back further.

How many remember Ribstone Pippin, Cox's Orange Pippin, Waltham Abbey, Stunner Pippin, Scarlet Pearmain, Adam's Pearmain, and New York Pippin?

As far back as 1892, the official Yearbook of New Zealand reported that these varieties of apple "are said to be in most request in the London market, always commanding a quick sale at good prices".

So, we are going back to the future, or to be precise, from the London market of 1892 to the United Kingdom market of 2021.

We have champion apples, and we also have people who champion our apples.

I want to do a shout-out to my good friend and colleague, the Trade and Export Growth Minister, Damien O'Connor. Damien has just returned from a trade mission to the UK where he finalised a new Free Trade Agreement.

This is a historic but a substantial deal, and it has been achieved in a year. That has never been done before.

The FTA covers a lot of primary products, like wine, beef, sheepmeat, butter, cheese, honey, onions, hoki, mussels.

It will put more money back into the pockets of our farmers and growers and producers.

But I just want to focus on apples, because they are so iconic to our region.

Fresh apples exported to the UK during the seasonal period January to July will be duty free from the date the agreement comes into force.

Apples exported from August to December will have duties eliminated over three years, with a transitional duty free seasonal quota of 20,000 tonnes a year.

This quota is almost twice our seasonal exports to the UK in recent years.

This FTA is one of our best trade deals ever and has been secured at a crucial time in our Covid recovery.

New Zealand is the second country to secure a new free trade agreement
with the United Kingdom post Brexit. The deal substantially cuts costs for exporters and businesses and provides greater access to the UK market.

Now for those who read to the end of this column, there is a small reward, the recipe that may have been used to make "the good apple pie" (or pudding) of 1815.

It is from the recipe book owned by Jane Austen's sister-in-law Martha Lloyd. I can't make any promises about how it will turn out!

A Baked Apple Pudding (with Pastry) Take a dozen of pippens, pulp them through your cullender, take six eggs, sugar enough to make sweet, the rind of two lemons grated, a 1/4 of a lb of butter (melted with flour or water).

Squeeze the juice of the two lemons, let the apples be cold before the ingredients are put together. Make a puff paste in the bottom of the dish, half an hour bakes it.