Help on the way for Pacific products facing tough barriers

Transcript

Pacific brands are still struggling to break down barriers to trade and market their products outside the Pacific.

As trade ministers of Melanesian Spearhead Group countries meet in New Caledonia ahead of a new MSG trade agreement, leaders in the Pacific are coming up with ways to help small businesses better prepare their goods to meet tough international standards.

Alex Perrottet has more.

Bernice Ngirkelau is the executive director of the Palau Aquaculture Cooperative Association. She says she's exporting live giant clams, or paua, to Asian markets and the USA, but the process to get certification is difficult.

BERNICE NGIRKELAU: The challenges that we face right now is getting our product certified, labelled and hopefully tested to meet the international standard of food processing. It's going to take about a year to find out and meet all of the requirements needed to get the product up and exported.

Iva Reimers-Roberto, from Robert Reimers Enterprises in the Marshall Islands says their business is the only one selling pandanus juice. While they do export through individuals to the USA, she says her company is still looking for a niche market in Japan, New Zealand or Australia, but it will be costly.

IVA REIMERS-ROBERTO: Some difficulties that we are facing is that of course the constraints are freight costs. This product is not internationally certified, but it's processed in a hygienic manner so it's very nutritious and it's organic, it's 100 per cent pure pandanus and family members do not want to add any preservatives so it is fully organic.

Iva Reimers-Roberto, who's also the chief of trade and investment for the Marshalls government, says five groups of home-grown products will get extra assistance: handicrafts, coconut  products, fisheries, tourism, and pandanus juice. The Managing Director of Niue Vanilla International, Stanley Kalauni says he's officially launching into the New Zealand market, but vanilla crops take three years to get going and it needs patience. His business supports more than 50 active farmers working their own plots.

STANLEY KALAUNI: With their vanilla beans, we buy directly from them. We also have our own farm. So two ways, we're supporting farmers who are actually on the ground doing their own thing, cultivating their own plantation and also we have our own vanilla farm that helps us produce vanilla to cater for the demand because we have to ensure what we are doing right now, that we have the capacity to supply the market.

Mr Kalauni says he's taking online orders and distributing in New Zealand but isn't yet stocking on shelves. At the same time, the MSG has just finalised its trade agreement, hoping to instigate extra investment in small businesses - especially products with the capacity to meet demand, if they do prove popular. The programme manager of trade and investment for the MSG Secretariat, John Licht, (as in hitched) says they interviewed 300 business-people from Mt Hagen in PNG to Tanna in Vanuatu over the agreement. He says products such as coffee, vanilla, as well as timber and building products need more support.

JOHN LICHT: Identifying those products and also looking at how we can progress them forward by way of improving the supply-side chain, by way of finding markets including branding, looking at how we can improve their access to other markets not just in MSG countries but outside the MSG countries.

John Licht says several products from each MSG country with strong prospects and links to communities will be promoted at the Investment Roadshow and Trade Fair in Noumea at the end of the month.