Best of 2025: Heather du Plessis-Allan - Does buying NZ-made ever work?

First of all, can I start by offering an apology to TVNZ? I gave them a bit of grief last night for starting the news bulletin with the peaches, but it turns out I was wrong and they were right.

This has sparked a flurry of debate over whether we prefer our Wattie's peaches from Hawke's Bay or whether we don't really care if it comes from China or not. 

It's also prompted a statement from Wattie's asking us to support local growers. In other words, can we please buy New Zealand made?

Now, that is a very nice sentiment, but let's be honest, that's all it is. It is a sentiment and it's not going to work.

I mean, this is me, this is not me being cavalier about how hard this must be for the Hawke's Bay peach growers who are losing their Wattie's contracts. For them, this must be absolutely devastating and I feel terrible for them.

But this is me being realistic about the prospect of any 'Buy New Zealand Made' campaign working.

Wattie's New Zealand peaches, according to Pak’nSave's online store, are $3.90 a can. Pam's cheap peaches are 99 cents a can. That's a no-brainer, you're gonna buy the 99 cent can.

Who is buying the $3.90 can? Grey Lynn? That makes no sense whatsoever.

I mean - look, maybe if I thought about it a little bit, which I don't, but if I did, maybe I would pay 10, 20 cents, 40 cents at a push, more for a New Zealand made product. But I would not pay four times as much, it's far too expensive.

And I wouldn't even do it in the first place because buying New Zealand made never works, does it? It never has. If it did, we would still be wearing Bata Bullets and buying Juliet Hogan and eating Sanitarium peanut butter.

We wouldn't be reading about the closure of manufacturing businesses every other month, which today, by the way, is the Carter Holt Harvey mill in Tokoroa.

I do the shopping in our house 90 percent of the time and I don't even know the provenance of the food I'm buying. I do not know where the canned food comes from, I absolutely do not know where the dried goods come from. And often, I'm not even really looking where the fresh fruit comes from.

Yep, I know where the meat comes from, but that's basically a given, isn't it?

It's simple economics, it always will be.

And even if Wattie's has this tiny little hope that there might be a last-minute public rally for the New Zealand grown peaches, I think they already know the outcome, which is why they've already cut the contracts.

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