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Source: ONE News -
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There's a silver lining in Iceland's volcanic ash cloud for some New Zealand exporters, but most are still counting the cost of closing European skies to airline traffic.
Export New Zealand executive director Catherine Beard said on Monday the exporters most at risk were those with perishable products such as seafood, flowers, or even high value time-sensitive exports such as high tech products.
However, Marlborough's NZ King Salmon reported a substantial increase in orders from customers in Dubai, Bangkok, Singapore, Osaka and Tokyo amid the aviation disruption caused by the eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano last Thursday.
Chief executive Grant Rosewarne said the company on Monday doubled its harvest with an extra 10,000 fish.
"Dubai's order is 100 times the norm while orders from Bangkok are 10 times and the others have all doubled but it's early days in the US and we are waiting to see what comes out of there," he said.
The customers were unable to source fish from northern hemisphere suppliers affected by the flight restrictions in Europe.
Eastern and Global Flower Exporters managing director Greg Keymer said his business had enjoyed a similar windfall.
"In the last 24 hours we've had a flurry of activity from the east coast of North America in particular looking for New Zealand orchids because they simply can't get any from Holland," he said.
Holland is the centre of the world trade in flowers.
Beard said it was too early to quantify the cost of the loss of flights into Europe for business, as those affected may be able to find customers closer to home.
"Some exporters are currently being told of delays of two to three weeks, while those with weekly shipments into UK supermarkets have had those consignments halted. There's also a seafood trade show in Brussels in 10 days time that neither product nor people will be able to attend.
"On the positive side, the majority of New Zealand export volume - such as chilled and frozen meat, dairy and kiwifruit - goes via ship, and airfreight to the Asia Pacific rim is flowing well.
"Export NZ in the Hawke's Bay region reports that much of its seafood which is air freighted is bound for Japan, USA and Australia, and air freighted flowers are mainly bound for Japan," she said.
Up to 10 tonnes of export-quality New Zealand lamb was stranded on Monday in transit at airports across the world, and South Island farmers' co-operative Alliance Group has stopped production of its lamb bound for Europe by air-freight.
Marketing manager Terry O'Connell said lamb shipments had been caught in Singapore, Los Angeles and Christchurch and the company would try to sell the product where it was, or return it to New Zealand.
The co-operative's production of lamb for air-freighting will not start again until next week at the earliest.
