New Melbourne market eyeing export potential

The Melbourne Market authority says the city's new wholesale fruit and vegetable market will open ne…

The Melbourne Market authority says the city's new wholesale fruit and vegetable market will open next month as planned, despite calls from traders to delay the move.

Plans to relocate the market from the city's west to a new site in the northern suburb of Epping were announced more than a decade ago and the new market is set to open on August 3.

Some growers have called for the move to be postponed until warehousing at the new site is completed, but market authority chairman Steve McArthur says it will open as scheduled.

"We're open for business at 3.30 am on Monday the third (of August), and it will be up and running and I'm sure it will go well," Mr McArthur said. "It won't be trouble free, we will have hiccups, we will have things that we need to pick up and do better, but I think this is a very exciting opportunity."

But David Wallace, president of the Vegetable Growers Association, said it wasn't fair to force traders to start operating from the new market when some of the site's refrigerated warehousing was not ready to be used.

Growers have also complained that, despite the site being almost double the size of the current West Melbourne market on Footscray Road, the new market actually has a smaller trading floor area for growers.

But Mr McArthur, of the market authority, said it reflected changes in the horticultural industry. However, Mr McArthur acknowledged there were still some families who wanted to grow and sell their own produce.

Mr McArthur said the authority wanted to capitalise on the new market's proximity to Melbourne airport to grow air-freight exports of fruit and vegetables.