increase font size
Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand executive director Kimberly Crewther.
The dairy industry will be a major beneficiary of a new free trade deal between NZ and the Gulf Co-operation Council whose members include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The deal was announced recently by Trade Minister Todd McClay who described it as the highest quality deal the GCC has done to date and its first with a major agricultural exporter.
He says it delivers duty free access for 99% of New Zealand's exports over 10 years and when combined with the recently concluded NZ-UAE CEPA, 51% of NZ exports to the region will be tariff-free from day one.
"The NZ and GCC trade is worth over $3 billion annually, with New Zealand exporting $2.6 billion in the year to June 2024. This includes $1.8 billion of dairy, $260 million of red meat, $72 million of horticulture and $70 million of travel and tourism services," he says.
Dairy Companies Association of New Zealand (DCANZ) welcomes this deal along with the other recent deal between NZ and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
DCANZ executive director Kimberly Crewther says NZ exported approximately $1.9 billion worth of dairy products to the GCC region in the last year.
"This makes the GCC region our second-largest dairy market after China.
"Locking in elimination of the already low tariffs on key dairy products into this highly valuable market provides important commercial certainty for dairy exporters," she says.
Crewther says Trade Minister Todd McClay and NZ's trade negotiators should be congratulated on the conclusion of these negotiations.
She says the fact that NZ is the first major dairy exporter to secure a free trade agreement with the GCC is very significant and DCANZ commends the Government for this outcome.
"We strongly encourage the Government to maintain momentum and ambition to bring down barriers with other negotiating partners, including upgrading existing trade agreements that have not yet secured dairy tariff elimination," she says.
Meanwhile, the executive director of the NZ International Business Forum, Stephen Jacobi, says the deal should enable further expansion of trade with the GCC's six members in the Middle East. He says the GCC region is NZ's seventh largest export destination and this new agreement puts the final touch on the framework for expanding trade ties in the region.
"We see potential to grow our exports to the GCC in the dairy, sheep, meat, seafood, horticulture and wood products sectors.
"There is also increasing interest in vital services such as ICT, education, environmental and professional services. There are also new opportunities for GCC goods, services and investment in our market," he says.
Trade Minister Todd McClay says his officials plan to meet their US counterparts every month from now on to better understand how the 15% tariff issue there will play out, and try and get some certainty there for our exporters about the future.
OPINION: Nothing it seems can be done in the short term to get Donald Trump to change his mind about removing the unfair 15% tariffs that he’s imposed on New Zealand exports to the US.
New Zealand avocado growers have received a major boost by securing a collective FernMark Licence for their exports.
Trade Minister Todd McClay says the US tariff decision appears to be based on a calculation of trade deficits, with countries running a surplus with the US moved to the higher rate.
Former special agricultural trade envoy Mike Petersen says meat exporters are going to have to be nimble and agile to take advantage of any opportunities that may arise in the chaos of the tariff crisis.
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.
OPINION: For years, the ironically named Dr Mike Joy has used his position at Victoria University to wage an activist-style…
OPINION: A mate of yours truly has had an absolute gutsful of the activist group SAFE.
