What was it all about?

This investment was tasked with developing individual export strategies for a range of tropical commodities including lychee, persimmon, papaya, passionfruit and banana, feeding into an overarching export strategy for Australian tropical fruit.

The new Lychee Industry Export Market Development Strategy was released during May 2018, with its top-level overview of trade opportunities and considerations available from Hort Innovation here in a brief market mapping report.

Some quick takeaways:

• Research shows lychee exports have the potential to reach 630 tonnes by 2023, which would represent 23 per cent of current production
  
  
• The best prospect markets for Australian lychees include New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and the US
  
  
• Lychees have competitive advantages when it comes to export, including the longest supply window in the world, from October to April
  
  
• Challenges include shelf life and temperature sensitivity of the fruit, as well as the size of the industry and volume of fruit produced in Australia.

Following the strategy findings, the next steps involved Hort Innovation working with industry to determine the appetite for levy investment in the export space and to subsequently roll out any trade-related R&D activities.