Tapping export potential
Billions of dollars could lie waiting for exporters from the top of the South Island if they considered new markets or food products, a new report suggests.
Infometrics report Food for Thought highlights opportunities for trade in Te Tauihu, the region which covers the Nelson-Tasman and Marlborough districts.
The report said there was another $24 billion to be made in Te Tauihu by diversifying and identifying different markets.
‘‘Our analysis has profiled products including peanut butter, icecream, and mussel oil, which all have potential for growth that exporters in the top of the south can consider,’’ Infometrics chief forecaster Gareth Kiernan said.
Ali Boswijk, chief executive of the Nelson Tasman Chamber of Commerce, welcomed the report more as a way to keep businesses better informed.
Nelson had its tourism sector but it also had a wide range of businesses – ‘‘small businesses and they are taking big risks, so the more information they can have to spread the risk and mitigate that, the better’’.
Kiernan said the export profile of the Tasman and Marlborough regions was quite different from
the rest of New Zealand, which tended to be dominated by dairy, meat and food processing.
Te Tauihu’s top exports were wine, seafood and aquaculture, and forestry and wood products, regionally accounting for about 3 per cent of New Zealand’s exports.
Merchandise exports were growing strongly at the top of the South, averaging 9 per cent a year since 2015, more than twice the rate of the national economy. But diversification was key. Recent tariffs and import bans by China on Australian products such as wine, seafood, and timber
had demonstrated the importance of securing and maintaining a range of international markets.
Wine was the top of the South’s biggest export and biggest area of export potential. Its export earnings were $1.96b last year, a three-fold growth rate since 2008.
But its untapped global market potential was $5.28b.
’’The challenge for the industry is to optimise its export profile between bulk and bottled wine, and between established and relatively untapped markets,’’ the report said.
In processed Tauihu’s exports wood, Te consisted of mainly medium density fibreboard (MDF) and some timber products, which had grown steadily over the past decade, in contrast with a fairly constant rate nationally.
Log exports had also been dynamic, quadrupling since 2009 to $3b, thanks to the Chinese market.
One of the biggest surprises was the salmon industry, Kiernan said. Salmon exports were primarily focused on fresh and chilled salmon.
‘‘Our analysis suggested there was not massive amounts of scope for growth from where we are the moment but [there was] a lot of potential growth in frozen salmon, which we do export a bit but nowhere near as much as the fresh fish.
‘‘It was around $170 million [potentially] in the United States for frozen salmon, which was more than the total salmon exports over the last year.’’
Seafood and aquaculture exports such as fish fillets and mussels generally had been earning between $280m and $500m in the region since 2008 but the report estimated the sector could grow an extra $3.2b.
Exports of frozen hoki, for example, earned $38m last year and while Australia was the region’s key hoki market, there was great potential for exports to Japan, the US, France and Poland.