Ōpōtiki grower wins 2025 Kiwifruit Innovation Award
Brett Wotton, an Eastern Bay of Plenty kiwifruit grower and harvest contractor, has won the 2025 Kiwifruit Innovation Award for his work to support lifting fruit quality across the industry.
And New Zealand kiwifruit marketer, Zespri says after one of the strongest-ever starts to the 2024 season, it is now amid the summer fruit season where it traditionally sees more competition.
Fruits like peaches, berries, melons and grapes are more available in volume and at lower prices than expected in the global market around this time. In the US market, NZ kiwifruit is also facing competition from green kiwifruit grown in Chile.
However, Zespri reports that top quality kiwifruit produced by NZ growers remains in high demand.
Around 75% of this season’s largest ever crop of more than 190 million trays of kiwifruit from New Zealand have now been shipped to Zespri’s customers around the world.
Chief executive Jason Te Brake says after a positive start to the season, Zespri’s teams in market are focused on driving sales and preserving value for growers through the competitive summer fruit season.
“There has been significant effort from the industry to deliver a fantastic crop of high-quality fruit which allowed us to capitalise on early season sales opportunities.
“We’re now in a period that is traditionally more challenging on the back of the arrival of summer fruit, which is something we see every year.
“This is a period where we typically experience strong competition from the likes of peaches, berries, melons and grapes which are more available in volume and at lower prices than expected.
“While strong competition has seen sales rates in most of our major markets ease back from the record highs we’ve seen in the early parts of the season, feedback from our customers has been clear that they have huge confidence in the quality of our fruit this season, and they want more of it.”
Te Brake says Zespri’s teams have been well prepared with season planning focused on getting the season off to a strong start before hitting the summer fruit period.
“With summer fruit experiencing tough growing conditions this season, it’s likely to be off shelves earlier with competition expected to subside in the next month and we’re already seeing signs of this starting to ease in some of our key markets.
“This season’s fruit quality has us well placed to close out the season strongly in the remaining months as this summer fruit exits the market, capitalising on clearer space in market to support returns to our growers.
“Zespri and our partners remain focused on delivering a record crop, with our teams in market executing some outstanding campaigns to drive sales rates and deliver the season well.”
