Blank Canvas rides white wine wave as New Zealand wine sales soar in China
If you find a new consumer in a developed wine market, you are taking them from someone else, says Blank Canvas co-founder Sophie Parker-Thomson MW.
There is widespread praise from both the primary and business sectors for the signing last week of a revamped free trade deal with China.
The signing took place in the virtual setting with Trade Minister Damien O’Connor in Wellington and China’s Minister of Commerce, Wang Wentao, participating from Beijing.
O’Connor says the signing modernises the existing free trade agreement (FTA) and ensures it will remain fit for purpose for another decade.
He says the upgraded agreement comes at a time of considerable global economic disruption due to Covid-19.
“China is one of New Zealand’s most important relationships. Signing this agreement builds on the significant benefits both countries have enjoyed as a result of our existing FTA,” says O’Connor.
He says the key outcomes of the upgrade include new rules that will make exporting to China easier and reduce compliance costs for New Zealand exports, and achieve a better deal for our services exporters through expanded market access and most-favoured nation commitments.
“Our agreement is modern and deepens our relationship further to ensure that NZ exporters have the best possible access to the China market,” he says.
O’Connor says existing conditions for dairy exports have been maintained, with all safeguard tariffs to be eliminated within one year for most products, and three years for milk powder.
“This means that by 1 January, 2024, all New Zealand dairy exports to China will be tariff free,” he says.
Dairy Companies Association (DCANZ) chairman Malcolm Bailey has welcomed the signing, saying it’s a good effort on the part of past and previous governments to get the FTA upgraded. Unfortunately he says it just preserves the status quo in terms of dairy exports to China. He says they were hoping that the so-called safeguards or longer term tariffs might have been removed.
NZPork has appointed Auckland-based Paul Bucknell as its new chair.
The Government claims to have delivered on its election promise to protect productive farmland from emissions trading scheme (ETS) but red meat farmers aren’t happy.
Foot and Mouth Disease outbreaks could have a detrimental impact on any country's rural sector, as seen in the United Kingdom's 2000 outbreak that saw the compulsory slaughter of over six million animals.
The Ministry for the Environment is joining as a national award sponsor in the Ballance Farm Environment Awards (BFEA from next year).
Kiwis are wasting less of their food than they were two years ago, and this has been enough to push New Zealand’s total household food waste bill lower, the 2025 Rabobank KiwiHarvest Food Waste survey has found.
OPINION: Sir Lockwood Smith has clearly and succinctly defined what academic freedom is all about, the boundaries around it and the responsibility that goes with this privilege.