AU: Why are imported frozen berries cheaper?
Melinda McHenry, from the Institute for Future Farming Systems at the University of Central Queensland, said the cost of labour was the obvious reason, but there were other factors at play.
"To employ somebody on an award wage to manually pick a crop such as blueberries or strawberries in Australia is about $20 an hour, whereas the same task performed by people overseas can be 2 or 3 cents an hour," she said. "If you consider the value of an industry like the blueberry industry, which is a boutique one in Australia, you can see the costs of labour are very high in this country."
However, even if labour is cheaper, surely the cost of shipping the berries from China and Chile to New Zealand to be processed, and then transported to Australia, eventually adds up to more than the cost of picking and processing them locally?
"It's an issue that a lot of members of the industry struggle to understand," Dr McHenry said.
"We are quite concerned as an industry as to the cost of offsite processing versus the cost of transit to Australia," she said. "Bear in mind also that we find it very difficult to transfer fresh produce to Australia, because it's fresh and doesn't have a very long shelf life. A lot of those packing processes are often conducted offshore, or at the very least in places like New Zealand, where the freight back to Australia is quite quick."
Source: abc.net.au
