New Zealand manufacturers in the food and food processing equipment sector in shutting the door on exports to Russia will find themselves also shutting themselves out of an immense and reliable growth market counsels the managing director of Napier Engineering & Contracting.

The company turnkey constructed a string of freezing works in Russia with all the expertise and processing equipment hardware shipped out of the Port of Napier.

The experience was both profitable for Napier Engineering and salutary. “Our staff who lived in Russia for months a time were superbly treated. In most contracts of the scope and size of this one there are major problems. But in the Russian project no problem arose that could not be solved on the spot,” recalled Ken Evans (pictured).

Mr Evans warned exporters that the US – invoked embargo that prevented EU members from selling to the Russians meant in practice that the Russians were jump-starting their own food and food processing machinery resources.

Mr Evans said that the Russians were not unaware of the inconsistency inherent in New Zealand banning US Navy vessels warships on the one hand.

Then “grovelling in meek obeisance” on the other in falling into line with a US embargo on Russia to which it was not even party to.

An export economy such as New Zealand’s simply could not eliminate the world’s biggest country, which also happened to be a growth one and an emerging one, insisted Mr Evans.

The falling into line of the EU with the United States embargo on Russia was substantially responsible for the world milk surplus.Milk and other agri products that would have been sent to Russia continue to back up into an unmanageable world surplus, noted Mr Evans.

The severity of the problem locally was being demonstrated by farmers in regions such as Taranaki being urged to “diversify,” he said, and do so regardless of their investment in processing and handling equipment.

Mr Evans urged the government to propound a sensible and statesmanlike trade policy with the United States “at least midway between the cringing and damaging humiliation of participating unofficially in their boycott of Russia and that of the equally silly and dangerous embargo on their warships here.”

According to Mr Evans the conflicting policies in regard to the United States , the “craven” one on the export ban to Russia, and the “frivolously damaging” one of the warships ban here had the effect of “putting New Zealand and its exporters into a dim light” around the world.

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk