Hidden' imports hurt local veg processors

Queensland's biggest carrot grower and packer says imported frozen and processed vegetables are squeezing locals out of the catering trade.

Kalfresh director Robert Hinrichsen says most Australians don't know they're eating imported vegetables at their local pubs, clubs or restaurants.

"The import competition in the vegie game is pretty insidious.

"You're never going to walk into a fruit shop or the section of the major chains and see large amounts of imports in that fresh section, but it's in all the bagged stuff, it's in all the frozen stuff and it's in all the canned stuff.

"That's where we've lost major market share.

Carrots being washed at Kalfresh, Kalbar, Queensland

"Maybe the broccoli at the local RSL came in frozen from China already floreted at a super-duper cheap price and it doesn't have 'product of China' written on it and everybody assumes that it's fresh local produce.

"So what we've noticed is a reduction in the number of small family-owned processors who operate out of the markets."

Kalfresh is at Kalbar, just over an hour's drive southwest of Brisbane.

The business grows and buys carrots and then washes and packs up to 200 tonnes of the vegetable each day at the peak of the season which started last week.

This week one major supermarket was selling carrots in Brisbane for $1.20 a kilogram.

Mr Hinrichsen prefers to see a retail price of $1.50 and says $2.00 keeps the growers happy.

"In our industry, we've seen some rather large growers either exiting or being forced out of the industry in the last couple of years and that's a sad fact of what those sorts of prices are doing.

Washed and packed carrots ready for dispatch at Kalfresh in southern Queensland

"There's only so much more you can wring out of efficiency and innovation.

"I think that food inflation is something that this nation is going to have to stomach if we are going to have growers.

"At the end of the day, people just have to care.

"I see things like the blokes down in Shepparton pushing out their pear trees for SPC. That just makes me cringe.

"If Australian people don't really care about it, then there's probably not a whole lot you can do."

Source: ABC Rural, 25 June 2013