Wednesday, August 17, 2011 2:00 PM

Australian apple growers are taking the unprecedented step of branding locally grown fruit with an “Aussie Apples” sticker to make it easy for shoppers to choose home-grown apples. 
 
That could be as many as 1.6 billion Aussie apples featuring the united brand each year.  

The growers wanted to empower Australian families to support local growers and actively choose “Aussie Apples”. 
 
Apple imports have been allowed into Australia, for the first time in 90 years, as a result of changes to government regulations by Biosecurity Australia. An independent economic report by the Centre for International Economics has shown Australian apple growers could lose a third of their income as a result of apple imports from China, New Zealand and the US – a loss to the industry of around $140 million a year.