❓ WA Govt research opens Japanese market for WA citrus, particularly red grapefruit from Carnarvon & Kununurra, by overcoming fruit fly disinfestation issues. Hurricane Katrina created a market vacuum.
AnsweredQoN 1228Legislative Council
QuestionView source ↗
CITRUS INDUSTRY - NEW MARKETS
I refer to recent research by Department of Agriculture and Food senior entomologist Dr Francis De Lima into the citrus industry. What new market opportunities have arisen for the citrus industry from this research in relation to Carnarvon and the Ord? Hon KIM CHANCE
I refer to recent research by Department of Agriculture and Food senior entomologist Dr Francis De Lima into the citrus industry. What new market opportunities have arisen for the citrus industry from this research in relation to Carnarvon and the Ord? Hon KIM CHANCE
AnswerView source ↗
I thank Hon Vince Catania for a good and timely question. The Department of Agriculture and Food, working with Horticulture Australia Ltd, has worked through a process of meeting the necessary protocols for the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan. Until recently, the requirements for disinfestation in markets when fruit is drawn from areas where fruit fly is endemic was such that it actually damaged the fruit and it was extremely difficult to get citrus fruit. Given the two areas that Hon Vince Catania has nominated - Carnarvon and Kununurra - the question obviously refers to red fleshed grapefruit. It is a very significant market. The consumption of red fleshed grapefruit in Japan is huge. It is something like 16 to one against its consumption of oranges. It is the only market in the world that has that sort of dynamic. It is a market that was previously supplied fundamentally by the south east of the United States - Florida in particular - and out of Texas and New Mexico. Since hurricane Katrina devastated the Florida industry, it is apparent that the industry is not being regenerated. There is a huge vacuum in the market in Japan at the moment. We were not able to fill that vacuum because of the problems caused by the disinfestation process. What Dr De Lima from the Department of Agriculture and Food has done, working with Horticulture Australia Ltd - at a huge cost, I might add - is to work through and prove the disinfestation process, which has now been established and approved by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan. This now opens up market opportunities for Western Australian producers of red fleshed grapefruit in particular, but other citrus as well, to enter Japan. Hopefully, given the enormous cost of establishing the protocol, the protocol will be adopted for the whole North East Asia region so that markets like Korea will ultimately be opened up. This is a huge breakthrough because the thing that was holding back the expansion of this potentially very rewarding industry in Kununurra, in particular, and also expansion in Carnarvon, has been questions around the capacity of the market to absorb such a huge increase in the production of one particular type of citrus. This breakthrough will enable one of those limitations to be removed.
Hon KIM CHANCE replied: I thank Hon Vince Catania for a good and timely question. The Department of Agriculture and Food, working with Horticulture Australia Ltd, has worked through a process of meeting the necessary protocols for the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan. Until recently, the requirements for disinfestation in markets when fruit is drawn from areas where fruit fly is endemic was such that it actually damaged the fruit and it was extremely difficult to get citrus fruit. Given the two areas that Hon Vince Catania has nominated - Carnarvon and Kununurra - the question obviously refers to red fleshed grapefruit. It is a very significant market. The consumption of red fleshed grapefruit in Japan is huge. It is something like 16 to one against its consumption of oranges. It is the only market in the world that has that sort of dynamic. It is a market that was previously supplied fundamentally by the south east of the United States - Florida in particular - and out of Texas and New Mexico. Since hurricane Katrina devastated the Florida industry, it is apparent that the industry is not being regenerated. There is a huge vacuum in the market in Japan at the moment. We were not able to fill that vacuum because of the problems caused by the disinfestation process. What Dr De Lima from the Department of Agriculture and Food has done, working with Horticulture Australia Ltd - at a huge cost, I might add - is to work through and prove the disinfestation process, which has now been established and approved by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan. This now opens up market opportunities for Western Australian producers of red fleshed grapefruit in particular, but other citrus as well, to enter Japan. Hopefully, given the enormous cost of establishing the protocol, the protocol will be adopted for the whole North East Asia region so that markets like Korea will ultimately be opened up. This is a huge breakthrough because the thing that was holding back the expansion of this potentially very rewarding industry in Kununurra, in particular, and also expansion in Carnarvon, has been questions around the capacity of the market to absorb such a huge increase in the production of one particular type of citrus. This breakthrough will enable one of those limitations to be removed.
I thank Hon Vince Catania for a good and timely question. The Department of Agriculture and Food, working with Horticulture Australia Ltd, has worked through a process of meeting the necessary protocols for the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan. Until recently, the requirements for disinfestation in markets when fruit is drawn from areas where fruit fly is endemic was such that it actually damaged the fruit and it was extremely difficult to get citrus fruit. Given the two areas that Hon Vince Catania has nominated - Carnarvon and Kununurra - the question obviously refers to red fleshed grapefruit. It is a very significant market. The consumption of red fleshed grapefruit in Japan is huge. It is something like 16 to one against its consumption of oranges. It is the only market in the world that has that sort of dynamic. It is a market that was previously supplied fundamentally by the south east of the United States - Florida in particular - and out of Texas and New Mexico. Since hurricane Katrina devastated the Florida industry, it is apparent that the industry is not being regenerated. There is a huge vacuum in the market in Japan at the moment. We were not able to fill that vacuum because of the problems caused by the disinfestation process. What Dr De Lima from the Department of Agriculture and Food has done, working with Horticulture Australia Ltd - at a huge cost, I might add - is to work through and prove the disinfestation process, which has now been established and approved by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan. This now opens up market opportunities for Western Australian producers of red fleshed grapefruit in particular, but other citrus as well, to enter Japan. Hopefully, given the enormous cost of establishing the protocol, the protocol will be adopted for the whole North East Asia region so that markets like Korea will ultimately be opened up. This is a huge breakthrough because the thing that was holding back the expansion of this potentially very rewarding industry in Kununurra, in particular, and also expansion in Carnarvon, has been questions around the capacity of the market to absorb such a huge increase in the production of one particular type of citrus. This breakthrough will enable one of those limitations to be removed.
This is a huge breakthrough because the thing that was holding back the expansion of this potentially very rewarding industry in Kununurra, in particular, and also expansion in Carnarvon, has been questions around the capacity of the market to absorb such a huge increase in the production of one particular type of citrus. This breakthrough will enable one of those limitations to be removed.
Hon KIM CHANCE replied: I thank Hon Vince Catania for a good and timely question. The Department of Agriculture and Food, working with Horticulture Australia Ltd, has worked through a process of meeting the necessary protocols for the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan. Until recently, the requirements for disinfestation in markets when fruit is drawn from areas where fruit fly is endemic was such that it actually damaged the fruit and it was extremely difficult to get citrus fruit. Given the two areas that Hon Vince Catania has nominated - Carnarvon and Kununurra - the question obviously refers to red fleshed grapefruit. It is a very significant market. The consumption of red fleshed grapefruit in Japan is huge. It is something like 16 to one against its consumption of oranges. It is the only market in the world that has that sort of dynamic. It is a market that was previously supplied fundamentally by the south east of the United States - Florida in particular - and out of Texas and New Mexico. Since hurricane Katrina devastated the Florida industry, it is apparent that the industry is not being regenerated. There is a huge vacuum in the market in Japan at the moment. We were not able to fill that vacuum because of the problems caused by the disinfestation process. What Dr De Lima from the Department of Agriculture and Food has done, working with Horticulture Australia Ltd - at a huge cost, I might add - is to work through and prove the disinfestation process, which has now been established and approved by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan. This now opens up market opportunities for Western Australian producers of red fleshed grapefruit in particular, but other citrus as well, to enter Japan. Hopefully, given the enormous cost of establishing the protocol, the protocol will be adopted for the whole North East Asia region so that markets like Korea will ultimately be opened up. This is a huge breakthrough because the thing that was holding back the expansion of this potentially very rewarding industry in Kununurra, in particular, and also expansion in Carnarvon, has been questions around the capacity of the market to absorb such a huge increase in the production of one particular type of citrus. This breakthrough will enable one of those limitations to be removed.
I thank Hon Vince Catania for a good and timely question. The Department of Agriculture and Food, working with Horticulture Australia Ltd, has worked through a process of meeting the necessary protocols for the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan. Until recently, the requirements for disinfestation in markets when fruit is drawn from areas where fruit fly is endemic was such that it actually damaged the fruit and it was extremely difficult to get citrus fruit. Given the two areas that Hon Vince Catania has nominated - Carnarvon and Kununurra - the question obviously refers to red fleshed grapefruit. It is a very significant market. The consumption of red fleshed grapefruit in Japan is huge. It is something like 16 to one against its consumption of oranges. It is the only market in the world that has that sort of dynamic. It is a market that was previously supplied fundamentally by the south east of the United States - Florida in particular - and out of Texas and New Mexico. Since hurricane Katrina devastated the Florida industry, it is apparent that the industry is not being regenerated. There is a huge vacuum in the market in Japan at the moment. We were not able to fill that vacuum because of the problems caused by the disinfestation process. What Dr De Lima from the Department of Agriculture and Food has done, working with Horticulture Australia Ltd - at a huge cost, I might add - is to work through and prove the disinfestation process, which has now been established and approved by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan. This now opens up market opportunities for Western Australian producers of red fleshed grapefruit in particular, but other citrus as well, to enter Japan. Hopefully, given the enormous cost of establishing the protocol, the protocol will be adopted for the whole North East Asia region so that markets like Korea will ultimately be opened up. This is a huge breakthrough because the thing that was holding back the expansion of this potentially very rewarding industry in Kununurra, in particular, and also expansion in Carnarvon, has been questions around the capacity of the market to absorb such a huge increase in the production of one particular type of citrus. This breakthrough will enable one of those limitations to be removed.
This is a huge breakthrough because the thing that was holding back the expansion of this potentially very rewarding industry in Kununurra, in particular, and also expansion in Carnarvon, has been questions around the capacity of the market to absorb such a huge increase in the production of one particular type of citrus. This breakthrough will enable one of those limitations to be removed.
Explore WA Government Data
Search the full archive in the free dashboard, or query programmatically via API.
Explore more
Government Gazette
Appointments, regulatory notices, planning changes.
Hansard
Debates, questions, speeches and sentiment.
Tabled Papers
Reports and documents tabled in Parliament.
Committees
Committee profiles and recent reports.
Regulations
Subsidiary legislation with filters and summaries.
Bills
Proposed laws and parliamentary progress.
Acts
Current WA legislation and summaries.
Explanatory Memoranda
Bills with EMs (text/PDF) available.
Members
MP profiles, party breakdown and rankings.
Pollie Rankings
Data-driven rankings across 19 categories.
Amendment Chains
Track how schemes and regulations evolve over time.