Australia's apple industry produces more fruit than required for domestic demand. According to an industry expert, the industry needs to find more markets and should have a share of the profit of processed apple goods.
Apple and Pear Australia Limited chief executive John Dollison told The Weekly Times the industry was regularly producing an apple crop of more than 300,000 tonnes a year, which exceeded the domestic market.
“We have to find more markets, like value added markets, where we can get about 5 per cent of the product off in things like apple fruit bars, vinegars, ciders, chips, purees, there’s a whole range of products in that area which we could start to explore,” Mr Dollison said.
“We need to work out a model where the grower gets a share of the profit and not just the raw produce going into it. So it would have to be some sort of co-operative joint venture and we’re looking for an industry partner who can provide that.
“If a Simplot or SPC Ardmona does it, all we are doing is supplying more matrial, and the growers get $100 a tonne when they need to be getting minimum $300 a tonne and ideally up to $500 a tonne for that processing.
“A 100 gram bar of compressed fruit sells for about $3.50-$4 and that’s more than 2kg of pears so you can understand why you would want to have a share of the profit.”
Mr Dollison said APAL was talking with major processors including Appledale Processing and Avondale Foods and the NSW Department of Primary Industries was keen to be involved because it had a higher number of processed fruit.
“It’s happened in juicing and it’s happened in cider, but the cider market is still relatively small and this year there’s not a lot of juicing ability in the industry,” he said.
“So for our product that doesn’t make it through to fruit sales a lot just has to be destroyed and used as pig food or something of that nature so we would love to see a much greater portion of that being sent to hopefully a grower-owned facility,” Mr Dollison said.
“The more fruit we can move into exports and value- added markets the less supply is on the domestic market and therefore the better price and margin to the grower.
“We’re doing some work with the CSIRO at Werribee who have some great commercialisation facilities.”
Source: weeklytimesnow.com.au
