Andrew Barber recently provided the following update:

“We have probably received most of what we are going to get back from growers, which unfortunately wasn’t a lot. However I think it will be representative of what the growers are facing in terms of fuel prices and how different companies are passing on the ETS costs. If there is somegood news it is that companies have been fairly passing on the true ETS costs. It hasn’t been used to slip in any additional charges.”

“I have been analysing the figures and started writing the results up. My focus is not on getting into too much detail, but working through and answering the objectives in the proposal.”

“With regards to carbon prices and trading have a look at: http://www.nzcarbonmarket.com/. This seems like it is about as good as it gets. I am hoping to talk to the company behind this website.”

Andrew will be speaking at the Product Group’s Annual Conference on the outcomes from this project. This presentation will be done in conjunction with one from Megan Papps, Ministry for the Environment, who will cover the results of the applications from greenhouse growers for carbon unit (NZUs) allocations for the six month period 1 July 2010 – 3 December 2010 and provisional units for the 2011 calendar year.

The Fresh Tomato Product Group’s AGM and Annual Conference are being held in the Rotorua Energy Events Centre on Wednesday 27 July. It follows the HortNZ Annual Conference on Tuesday 26 July. The Fresh Tomato conference programme highlights are:

8.45 am – 10.30: AGM including a grower-only discussion

11.00 am: Renewable energy presentation

1.30 pm: Government Industry Agreement - Biosecurity and Plants Market Access update

2.15 pm: NZ Emissions Allocation scheme, NZU’s and Unit trading presentations.

4.00 pm: Conference concludes

Statistics New Zealand was affected by the Christchurch earthquake, which caused delays to its ability to process the information. The end of year total for 2010 was 3,438,709kgs with a value of $11.69m. 60% went to Australia. Other significant markets were Fiji, Taiwan, Canada, USA & Japan. This is well up on the exports for the previous 2009 of 2,250tonnes with a value of $6.63m.

The total for the first three months of 2011 was 2,520,770kgs with a FOB value of $8.36m. This is almost a 1,000 tonnes and $3m up on the same period last year. Over 70% went to Australia.

In 2010 imports from Australia finished in November and the total for the year was 2,195,896 kgs with a value of $7.4m. This was the lowest volume and value imported for several years where the average annual volume is around 3,000 tonnes. Imports this year are late starting due to the horrendous floods experienced in Queensland wiping out complete crops. The down side to that is all the simultaneous replanting that occurred afterwards. So it appears we can expect large volumes of imports to start arriving from early June.

Several shipments of tomatoes and capsicums have failed Australian pre-clearance this season, but with one exception the insects have been at the low level of quarantine concern; e.g. spiders and flies. The one exception is under investigation by NZ MAF and Biosecurity Australia officials.