SYDNEY: Increasing demand of Australia’s high quality produce can be no better displayed than a Cathay Pacific 747 cargo plane making its first transfer from a new regional Australian airport to China on Monday.
Australia’s agriculture industry, which exports over 80 percent of produce, is on the cusp of a boom cycle from increasing demand for high quality produce in the emergent Asian middle class, driven primarily from China.
So far in 2015, Australia’s farm commodities for export have risen rose 6 percent to 43.5 billion Australian dollars (31.21 billion U.S. dollars).
“Consumers globally are becoming increasingly discerning about the food they eat — they want to know exactly what is in it, how it is produced and where it’s come from,” Mort & Co. sales manager Tim Burgess, who has four tons of Phoenix Range beef on board for shipment to hotels in Shanghai, said.
Not only chilled beef, the flight from Toowoomba in Queensland to Hong Kong on Monday carried mangos, lettuce, pecans, highlighting the requirement for significant investment into supply chain infrastructure to underpin profitability, Australia’s Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce said in a statement.
“Horticultural products, in particular, are high value exports with a short shelf life — the sooner they get to their destination markets the better for both customers and farmers,” Joyce said.
Though the flight is a one-off, forming part of the Hong Kong-based airline’s launch for their new Boeing 787-800 cargo conversion aircraft, the company is always looking for new freight opportunities.
“This is a very exciting time for Australian exporters, and it seems that south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales producers and businesses have enormous potential for growth after signing the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement,” Cathay Pacific’s south-west Pacific general manager, Nelson Chin said in a statement. Five of the 12 new Cathay routes over the past two years have been for freight only.
