Paul Paynter: Yummy Fruit Company General Manager on the quantity of preserved peaches coming in from China

People are being urged to buy local tinned fruit as imports from overseas flood the market.  

New Zealand’s peach industry took a significant hit last year, when Heinz Wattie’s told multiple peach growers it would no longer need their fruit. 

It's because many consumers are choosing imported fruit instead after China dumped hundreds of thousands of canned peaches into the market at a much lower cost. 

Hawkes Bay's Yummy Fruit Company general manager Paul Paynter told Mike Hosking there's a difference in quality. 

He says if people buy a can of Watties and a can of the Chinese brand, the taste is night and day.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And so the peach dumping business and investigations found cheap
Chinese peaches have been done by this company, J and
G International, and it's caused material harms in New Zealand's industry.
So that's their finding. This first came to our attention
when what is of course, you remember last year stopped
buying local fruit from local growers. Now Paul Painter is
the Yummy Fruit Company general manager and he's with us

(00:20):
on this. Paul, very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Is this getting enough attention?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well? Probably not. I mean I think that in general
we like to assume a wonderful world of free trade
and honest dealings, and that isn't the world we live in.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
No, and when what he said or did what they
did last year, was that a major red flag that
people should have acted on more than they have.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Perhaps, Well, I think it reflects a whole lot of things.
Whaties have reduced quite a number of contracts, and that
reflects all sorts of dynamics here Sydney cyclone Gabrielle scared
them off and forced them to go and see the
supply elsewhere. New Zealand's unfortunately got relatively highlight levels of
land costs, labor costs, energy costs, and that's a big

(01:04):
color for Watties. They're huge gas users and that's back
in the news as well. And I know they've priced
up a biomass burner for energy, but you know, what's
that going to cost twenty million? I don't know. And
so they apparently haven't made any money since twenty twenty one.
So there's a whole lot of threats here and New

(01:25):
Zealand has to be a more business friendly environment. And
the obvious place that we've made a real mess of things,
it's energy. It's killing the some of the sawmills and
many other industrial businesses like it is in during Many
or the UK, and so gas supplies is at the
heart of that, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Ironically we're talking about gas. We weren't going to talk
about guess, but we're now talking about gas. But your
example of Watties and they're pricing and the land use
and stuff, is that about cheaper product from offshore. So
that's a competition thing versus dumping, which is a separate thing,
isn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah? Absolutely, But I understand, and these products have been
sourced directly by the supermarkets and they're not going to
really ask too many questions. They're going to say to
their friends in China, what's it a deal with? Give
me on a can of peatures. But I think the
important thing for the New Zealand consumer to do is
be aware of the difference of quality and then go
out tomorrow by yourself a can of what IS and

(02:18):
a can of the Chinese stuff, and you eat them.
It's light and day. It really is?

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Is it really? Because I was going to say the
problem with the consumer is the consumer's driven by a price,
right or wrong. That's how it works, isn't it?

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Well? One of boring? So I went out and bought
the what is, the South African fruits and the Chinese fruit,
and the South African fruits kind of passable. Chinese fruits
pretty rubbishy, and the Wattes stuff is demonstrably the best.
It's no doubt about that. But there's no doubt there's
a living costs pressure and people looking for a chip option.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah exactly. But coming back to this investigation, So when
what Is did what they did last year, the investigation
was launched, dumping was found and material harm to New
Zealand's industry was also so found.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
What happens then, well, they make a finding, they propose
some sort of duty to right the wrongs, and then
they review their findings and I suppose they'll get a
couple of comments and the Chinese get a bit scared
and pontificate for a while. So these things take an
awfully long period of time, at which time the damage

(03:22):
has basically already been done. And there's people now who've
already pulled out their features that are planning to do
so this coming winter. And so you know, it's not
like you can instantly right that wrong with the past.
It's done its damage. Impredatory pricing is well demonstrated around
the world. You go in, they're cheap, you kill off
an industry, and then you basically own it. So it's

(03:45):
a good strategy, but it is quite corrupt.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
So if I had a minister on from the government
a go and they go, oh, no, we've got laws
around this, you're telling me it's their kind of pointless
laws because they don't achieve anything.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well, ultimately they will because they're going to provide a
more level playing field. But it's quite possible that what
he's get out of the game entirely in the films
of time, particularly the economics of running a big business
like that, and the reduced corn they've reduced beetroot a
lot of empty land here in Hooks Bay where the

(04:18):
cropping bodyms have been reduced. There's a point at which
a big factory like that doesn't work anymore. So I
think the biggest threat of all is if you have
a whole lot of these products that are not working
or in decline, one day they say we'll see you around,
and that would be more devastating than the in the
nineteen days closes of the freezing works here in Hooks Bay.

(04:38):
Huge employer, certainly in the top three or four employers
in Hooks Bay, and that'll be seriously bad news.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Is dumping going on beyond Peaches, Oh, certain.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Of it now. I mean Donald Trump's a bit of
a peg, but he's right. It's not a level playing
field out there, There's no doubt. I mean, you can
go down and buy a very good value bottle of
wine from Europe and you're thinking, how are they doing
it this cheap? And you can do that with quite
a range of products. It is the world of sort
of pickally out of China State sanctioned capitalism, and there's

(05:07):
a whole lot of products. I fail to see how
they can put out some electric cars at the prices
they do, So you know, they support their businesses, particularly
early on, and they make strategic decisions to get a
foothold in the market. So it's a tough old world
out there, and it certainly isn't the idealistic world of
free trade that we dream of.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
And I still hopeful, well, well said Paul, appreciate it
very much. Paul Painter is the Gummy Fruit Company general manager.
That EV thing I do know about and have mentioned
it on the program before, And it's all subsidized by
the government, and so they can't make the cars for
the prices they're selling them. And there's about one hundred
EV makers in China at the moment, most of which
will eventually disappear and you'll be left with maybe four

(05:46):
or five, six or seven something like that. The names
you probably know already, but there's a lot of names
in our market alone that you will see today you
probably won't see any year's time, and you'll be asking yourself,
where do I get the bits for it? Where's the
service sent, where's the salesman, what's my resale value on
my whatever you call it's called in the answers zero,

(06:07):
So it's it's the peach thing worries me. That's why
we got them on. So they did a study. They
found the crime they and the trigger pointer is material damage.
And yet what's you know. They'll stick a few tariffs
on but it's too late. So what's the point of
all of that. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast,
listen live to news talks it'd be from six am weekdays,

(06:28):
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