BC Cherries are going to Japan.
Lawrence MacAulay, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, along with Member of Parliament for Kelowna-Lake Country, Stephen Fuhr, announced today that the Government of Canada has secured market access for British Columbia fresh cherries to Japan.
“They’ve been working on this since 2006 and from I heard today, from a number of speakers was, for one reason or another, it just wasn’t happening,” says Fuhr.
In 2017, Japan imported over $62.7 million dollars worth of fresh cherries from around the world. Early estimates peg the yearly income for Canadian cherry producers to end up being $8 million.
Fuhr says, “We’ve got a world-class product coming from here and my intuition tells me that once you get into a market that’s really happy with it, especially during off-times, when you can’t get it anywhere else, my gut tells me it will be even bigger than we thought.”
Additionally, once the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) kicks in, Japan's tariffs of 8.5% on fresh cherries will be eliminated over 5 years.
Japan opening its’ doors to BC cherries may be a sign of things to come. “I’m going to give these guys, maybe a day, then I’m gonna be knocking on the door to see where we’re at with South Korea (for cherry exports) and if we haven’t gone very far, I’m going to encourage we start heading in that direction,” says Fuhr.
“What’s going with the US, I think highlights, we can’t, and shouldn’t be as dependent as we are on the US. It’s a good market. We want to continue to work with them, obviously, but there’s other markets out there and should we run into difficulties with a particular market, it’s better to be diversified than not.”