Gadge, economies of scale are all out of whack these days. For a long time throughout the 90s and 00s, fish being caught in New Zealand were sent to China to be put in packets and then sent back to New Zealand for re-distribution to places like Australia. In more recent years the trend is to distribute the fish packaged directly from China, thus cutting out the need for double shipping. I once joked at the kitchen table that some of these fish were more widely traveled than myself and it's a wonder they don't all have their own passports. I suspect that as transport costs continue to increase we will eventually start to see Australian and New Zealand caught and packaged fish products on our shelves once again, thus cutting out the Chinese "middle men".
Re the short shelf life of milk, the same situation applies. You may not realize that post-deregulation of the dairy industry, a huge amount of milk from Queensland was sent to far SE Qld, NSW and even to Victoria for processing due to the huge loss of local milk processors such as the Unity factory in Toowoomba. In fact I know many farmers faced the dilemma of having milk in their vats but could not find any companies willing to pick up their milk. Turn the clock on to 2014 and the reverse is true. Milk collected from dairy farms in Victoria is making a journey of nearly 2,000 kilometres for processing to Queensland and northern New South Wales to meet demand. Companies can still make money from the milk, because not enough is being produced up north.
Queensland has lost 100 million litres of milk in the five years prior to 2014. In the same period NSW probably lost another 30 million litres over that period.
The big trend now is for the Chinese to buy up the largest dairy farms to supply their own markets with powdered milk product. I am sure this will soon create a shortfall of processed milk in Australia which will have to be found somewhere, and if more Australian farmers continue to leave the industry I am not sure where this milk can come from. I guess New Zealand is closer to us than China, so that would be one likely source, but that depends on whether the Chinese can produce "long life" milk products at far cheaper cost. But ultimately the Chinese may price themselves out of the market due to rapidly increasing transport costs. I would hate to be a dairy farmer in modern Australia. The red tape is horrendous and it costs far more to feed cattle than what you ever get back from the milk produced. Add droughts to the equation and it is pretty hopeless. I guess this is something this new wave of Chinese dairy farmers may eventually discover!
