Dr Mohammed Alqumber holds a mobile trading licence to sell his date product, produced by his company Tamrtime, and wants to do so in the railway station area during the Otago Farmers Market.
However, under the Dunedin City Council's mobile trading bylaw, he cannot trade within 300m of a similar business. Also, the Otago Farmers Market Trust turned down his application to be a vendor at the market as the date product, while manufactured locally, was not grown in the southern South Island.
Dr Alqumber said the station was where the customer base for his product was. He had moved to land next to the settlers museum for a couple of months, but there was a lack of foot traffic.
"I can't grow my business if I can't be near."
As a resident of Dunedin, Dr Alqumber believed he had the right to trade at the railway station, and that the council had given the market trust an unfair advantage by allowing them to use the site.
Instead, he tried to trade on the footpath near the market, but on Saturday was moved on by police on behalf of the council for breaching the 300m bylaw.
Dunedin City Council senior environmental health officer Wayne Boss said the council had written to Dr Alqumber in May and again in June about illegal trading and had spoken to him in person.
On Saturday, the council received complaints about his actions, assessed he had no consent to be on the footpath and was again in breach of the bylaw.
While not selling his product on Saturday, he was trying to further his business, which fell under the bylaw, Mr Boss said.
"The bylaw is there to protect businesses. He sees it as unfair discrimination, but it's there for a reason."
He was not being treated any differently from anyone else in the same situation, Mr Boss said. There were other places from which he could run his business, but he was not interested.
If he continued to breach the bylaw, the council would need to consider revoking his mobile trading licence, Mr Boss said.
Farmers market trust chairman Paul Crack said the key condition governing the operation of stalls at the farmers market was that the produce they sold was grown and processed within the community it served.
A secondary consideration was space, and the trust received about six applications a month from businesses wanting to trade at the market.
