Forgotten about this idea from my Hikashop early days until you mentioned it.
Since then not had any need to pursue it further myself.
It would be an occasionally used convenience tool for initial / large volume imports.
Uploading the images using FTP and then importing the CSV has worked fine for me.
This suggestion would just removes the FTP step and use a zip file instead.
The zip file could contain a structure something like this:
myproducts.csv
images/product1.jpg
images/product2.jpg
images/product3.jpg
images/product4.jpg
files/product5.txt
Due to a interruption in circumstances I have some time available to play with possibly interesting ideas and no pressure from other people, so will put that down as a possible one for the list.