Australia’s first-ever shipment of fresh lychees into the United States has landed successfully, just in time for the pre-Christmas rush. To make the Air New Zealand flight to Los Angeles, , the lychees had to go from far north Queensland, where they were picked and packed, to Brisbane to be treated and tested against strict protocols on chemical use, including zero tolerance for pests and defects.
There are only eight Australian lychee growers registered for export to the US. Australia’s lychee industry was given the all clear to export to the US last season, but tough pesticide restrictions by the US on imported fruit meant no Australian fruit made it.
This first shipment of fruit had to pass a stringent inspection where 300 individual lychees were visually inspected and 100 of them cut open to ensure there were no pests or defects. Unlike our domestic market where there is a one to five per cent tolerance in defects, in the USA there is no tolerance. Another challenge is the 10 to 11 days the fruit had to spend in the transport chain.
The export achievement is a milestone for Australia’s lychee growers, but there are still challenges getting the fruit into the highly-valuable Chinese market. Lychees are native to China but they are only harvested there in the middle of the year. Demand for lychees in China soars during Chinese New Year, in January and February, which coincides with Australia’s lychee harvest season. The fruit going to the USA was low-dose irradiated, the same as New Zealand, which is a very safe way to send the fruit, but China isn’t accepting that at the moment.
The industry has done another submission to open up the market for Australian in lychees in China, but it hasn’t gone through yet and growers are determined to keep pursuing it. They believe finding new export markets will keep the price reasonable for all growers so they can make money out of it, as the domestic market can sometimes get flooded, which brings the price down.
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Main Information Source: ABC NEWS http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-23/australian-lychees-headed-to-united-states-but-not-china/8145128
