What's new

importing seeds to NZ

G

guest123

wow thats pretty harsh farmer green ,,, i would have thought they would do the same as australia ,,, just send a notice from customs to say they have some seeds , that u can either pay to have sent back ,, or they will just destroy them if they do not hear from u ..
sounds like that guy spilled the beans so to speak ,, and could have avoided some problems if he had kept a bit quieter ..
most seedbanks will send seeds discretely .. u can also see why its a good idea to use a safe address that has nothing to do with your grow
 
FarmerGreen

FarmerGreen

Member
Yeah, I imagine its probably at the extreme end of the scale as I have heard of plenty of good stories. But still, whether he was stupid with his name or his address it must have been a dog that intercepted it at customs.
NZ customs has been known to be pretty harsh at times.
Looks like I'll have to stick to my bagseed for a bit.
 
G

guest123

not much chance of it being a dog mate ,, seeds dont smell like herb .. and its pretty rare to have dogs sniffing all the international male ,, unless theres a tip off ..
yes ive been through the airport at nz , and the customs were pretty keen , but very polite , and didnt make me feel too violated ... lol ...
ive sent seeds to nz more than once without problems , id say the news story was just very bad luck and not the norm ...
be interesting to hear from other folks down your way as to how much success they have had with their orders ...
the govt here try to spread propaganda about things like importing seeds , and tell u they can do things that really they cant ,, but they know it s enough to stop a lot of people trying ...

i had some seeds sent to me from gypsy around 12 months ago, was quite a parcel , and it had been opened by customs and searched but the seeds were still quite intact , so it looks like we beat them now and then ...
 
FarmerGreen

FarmerGreen

Member
I thought it was the dogs that found the seeds. Who knows I suppose they never really let the truth of how it all happens out.
It certainly did feel like a technique to scare people off doing it
 
G

guest123

yea u cant seem to trust the buggers .. hehehe ... sometimes it pays to safely test out things , never know your luck .. if its not a package from a suspicious place then your chances are pretty good ....
 
T

Tomacco

New member
a mate of mine in chch got woken up early in the morning a week before xmas a few years back for importing seeds.

he was a personal grower, but being the technorat that he is, his grow equipments were deemed "hi tech" the cops. he had 4 plants in the sealed grow cabinet.

what was unfortunate was that he ordered a 4-5 diferrent seeds, which then entitled him to some freebie seeds as well.

seeds never arrived (this was 4-5 months before xmas). he wrote back asking for a resend. the seedbank complied and sent him some more. ------> bad news.

the customs have already confiscated the first package. voila! a second batch of seeds arrived. this raised a flag for further investigation.

during bust day, approx. 20 customs officers arrived first with dogs and searched the whole place. the number of seeds imported, resends included, were 120.

an hour later, the 2 cops arrived. saw it was a personal grow, albeit "hi tech". saw the 4 10cm plants, and the good cop called his supervisor about what a total waste of time the whole operation was.

Good cop proceeded to talk to the customs officer-in-charge. cop tells them to not waste anymore time, pack up and f*ck off from the property.

my mate got away with diversion. never had problems with the cops, but said customs are a totally different animal. apparently customs officers get a kick from seeing people naked at the border.

my mates advise were:
do not underestimate cops and customs officers
if busted, be polite
get a safe address
dont make serious decisions while being intoxicated
get a lawyer on retainer


stay safe, google "ion scanners", thats the type of xray machine the customs use to scan packages.

there is a reason why we dont get the most up to date genetics in NZ!
 
Last edited:
Mountain_Monkey

Mountain_Monkey

Member
never had any problems getting them over here in Oz but I guess things must be a fair bit tighter over there.As far as ion scans go there isnt much one can do if they are being employed, real needle in a haystack technology I guess...
 
T

Tomacco

New member
well, to minimise risk:

ask the seller to send without breeder's pack.
minimise number of plants and light units. maximise the wattage of the light used instead (1X1000w looks better than [1X600w + 1X400w])
hydro makes it that much harder to get away with a conviction

seedbanks ought to have remailers in Australasia, i reckon it would be a hit
 
S

solarpowered_ca

Member
there have been 2 busts in Christchurch this year that involved the importing of seeds. Both of these people imported seed directly from Holland. do not buy directly from holland seedbanks. Try some of the other seed banks in uk or canada. They get through. I notice that one seed bank now wraps their seeds in a carbon paper style inner wrapper and i am wondering if this foils the xray from damaging seeds as they are aware of the xray situation in south pacific nations.
Interesting both those who got busted were let off with a slap over the wrist .
 
S

Swamp Nug

New member
Never heard of anyones not getting throu!

Know guys who pull off 100+ pounds a year and they are still ballze enough to have their seeds sent to their own house each year! Im not that keen...

Which seeds companies send their package in carbon paper?
 
C

Cabri

Member
What a dickhead? i did that once and got away with it too But my mom asked me who i knew from Adam. I told her it was a catalogue of ikea furniture and it seemed to work. That was before the lecky bill came in.
 
DC3

DC3

Member
keke.nz said:
problem was he got them straight from holand i guess?
Click to expand...

My seeds from Holland never arrived but I haven't had any trouble getting them from the states. I'm sure customs target mail out of Holland and I won't be doing that again...take care out there.

DC3
 
Hughesy

Hughesy

Member
Is that NZ in New New Zealand or NZ Australia Cause my Bro in law got some in at xmas. NL#5. East Coast NZ.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Latest posts

Top