AU: No Tasmanian apple exports for first time in 130 years
Less than a decade ago Tasmanian apples still made for over 50% of Australian international apple sales.
Fruit grower Howard Hansen has an orchard at Grove in the Huon Valley. His great grandfather began growing apples in the late 1890s, and his grandfather established the Grove farm in 1944.
"You never have a good year with apples any more", Mr Hansen said.
"This'll be the first year ever that we haven't exported any apples.
"Two issues; mostly the value of the Australian dollar over three years has seen 30 cents out of every dollar of revenue disappear because of the movement in the exchange rate.
"The other thing that's been significant is we now no longer have any international shipping out of Tasmania."
This, he says, translates into an extra $4,500 for each container of fruit sent to Asia and that's on top of the usual cost of $3,000.
Fourth generation orchardist Andrew Griggs family has grown apples at Lucaston Park for about 80 years.
"The returns that we could get back here, they were just too low. They were either at or below the cost of production," he said.
"So for that reason we stopped."
Jos Driessesn, who is Fruit Growers Tasmania president, says the problem has been compounded by high labour costs.
"We just can't compete with Chile, Argentina, South Africa. We just can't compete with them any more," he said.
Source: au.news.yahoo.com.