Tasmania’s bite-sized Exports
Once renown for its apples, Tasmania’s international trade now consists of their niche agribusiness products and their clean energy expertise.
It looks like an apple, it grows a lot of apples and if you sink your teeth into the right place, it tastes like an apple, but today the so-called Apple Isle, Tasmania, is famous for more than its fruit.
“Our traditional strengths have been in agribusiness, the food and beverage sector. If you’re looking historically, it’s dairy and fresh produce like onions and potatoes. If you go back to European settlement, it was the only climate the Europeans could tame. It had a more consistent rainfall than other states,” explains Tristram Travers, Austrade’s state manager for Tasmania. “In more recent times the largest exports are minerals and oil in terms of dollar value.”
Blessed with natural advantages—fertile soil, reliable rainfall, clean air and a longer growing season than other Australian states—Tasmania is an obvious choice to provide food products to Australia and the world. But Tasmania’s agribusiness strength is not just in staple fruits and vegetables like apples and potatoes, the state is increasingly exporting niche food products, sometimes for specific markets.
Earlier this year, Minister for Trade Simon Crean reported that Tasmanian grower Reid Fruits sold 17.5 tons of Satonishiki cherries, a Japanese variety, to its home country. Travers says this was possible because, free from fruit flies that plague the mainland states, Tasmania has quarantine freedom with Japan. He lists other novel agricultural exports such as poppies, wasabi (horseradish), buckwheat and canola free from genetic modification as emerging products.
Robert Heazlewood, executive director of Brand Tasmania, agrees that the state has become more specialised and has done well by offering premium food and beverage products. “Because the volume of our exports are smaller, we’re not considered a serious commodity player, so we need to be niche,” he says. “And because our distribution is further away, it makes sense to get a premium price for a premium product.”
Distribution is a key challenge for the island state, but it means Tasmanian businesses are born to export. “It’s a small market in itself so shipping is a natural extension of business whether that be shipping to the mainland or shipping internationally,” says Travers. Because shipping vessels frequent Tasmania less often than other ports on the mainland, however, and the costs of shipping can be prohibitive for some, he believes this is a drawback that Tasmanians need to address during their logistics management.
Despite this, Travers believes there are plenty of opportunities for Tasmanian businesses to add value to their exports, particularly in services and in the clean energy sector. “A lot of it comes back to the innovation you get from being an island state. Tasmania was using clean energy long before the world even knew what clean energy was,” he says. “We have a well-established clean energy industry so we have a natural advantage passing on our knowledge in that area.”
Marine shipbuilding, and the businesses and suppliers that support the sector, is another notable industry in the Tasmanian economy and includes everything from materials and equipment to ICT services and life raft systems.
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