Thailand has informed Australian authorities it plans to cut market access for all Australian stonefruit within a fortnight because of disagreements over a new biosecurity protocol.
The ban will take force from 1 January, covering Australian cherries, peaches, apricots, nectarines and plums, reported the ABC.
Disagreements over biosecurity audits for a new protocol set to be introduced before the end of the season are apparently behind the Thai decision.
“I believe they met in Bangkok yesterday and we’re hopeful that that Thai authorities will reverse the decision to ban these fruit pending an audit visit,” David Minnis of 888 Exports told the ABC.
“The industries didn’t say ‘don’t audit’, they said we don’t want the audit now. Come out in late February perhaps.”
Australia exports A$4.5m (US$4.5m) of stonefruit to Thailand, but exporters have been uncertain about the growing market’s future because of the new protocol.
Part of wide-ranging overhauls in Thailand’s quarantine requirements, the new protocol’s cold sterilisation requirement effectively rules out airfreight, which have accounted for the majority of Australian stonefruit shipments to Thailand.
“Stonefruit and cherries are I think almost totally airfreight, and the change in protocols will mean the trade will be almost totally removed,” Maxwell Summers, CEO of the Australian Horticultural Exporters' Association (AHEA), told Asiafruit in late November.
“It is of major concern, the changes in Thailand, because it was becoming a very attractive market.”
