The Business Roundtable has come out in support of the Turners and Growers argument against Zespri, saying it is high time there was deregulation in the kiwifruit export market.

Business Roundtable executive director, Roger Kerr, says Zespri’s export monopoly is an international anomaly that needs to be killed-off.

"Zespri is the sole export monopoly that we’ve got to markets other than Australia there are no others to my knowledge now around the world.

"And what you always do with a monopoly is because a single firm can’t spot all the opportunities can’t be the best at everything.

"You want to have competition in markets and allow other people to innovate in all sorts of different way in terms of varieties, in terms of market opportunities that they may have that other firms don’t and so that’s what we’re forgoing in terms of staying with a monopoly."   

Zespri has sole exporting rights to every country in the world except Australia and Mr Kerr says there is no pressure on Zespri to be innovative.

"Well it’s a pretty draconian kind of regulation isn’t it that a New Zealand producer is not able to trade freely with a buyer aboard. I mean, that’s kind of unique I think in the New Zealand economy now.

"Turners and Growers is certainly one company that are saying look it’s got new varieties, its sees opportunities in different places, and if it doiesn't take them they’ll be grown in Chile, or somewhere else.  

Despite Turners and Growers having developed its own varieties of kiwifruit it is forbidden from exporting them to the world and Mr Kerr says the New Zealand economy will be the loser.

Mr Kerr says the newly established Productivity Commission would be the ideal vehicle to hold an inquiry into Zespri’s monopoly.

"I think that a very sensible thing for the Government to do, given that these arguments have raged to and fro for a long time, is to send a reference to the new Productivity Commission. It’s ideally set up to examine an issue of regulatory policy of this sort.