Tough year for kiwifruit

Zespri says around 136m trays of kiwifruit were exported this season (2023/24) which has largely wrapped up, down on 171 million trays supplied in 2022.

But Zespri chief executive Dan Mathieson says the news is not all bad, with much-improved prices for this year and the prospect of higher production and good prices in the future.

He says this season’s low volume of fruit available for export is due to the warm weather and also the severe frost which hit many growers in the Bay of Plenty.

Some orchards in Hawke’s Bay and Tairāwhiti were hit by Cyclone Gabrielle.

Mathieson admits it’s been a tough season for growers and, for some, there will be relief in the updated price forecast, which has increased since the last projection in August.

Green is an example with the price per tray hitting $9.00 – up 90 cents on the August forecast and well ahead of the $5.78 growers were getting a year ago.

Zespri green organic growers can now expect to get up to $12.00 - up from $8.68 last season.

In fact, all the other varieties including Sun- Gold and RubyRed are significantly up on the earlier forecast.

Mathieson says when volumes are down, Zespri does its best to get the maximum return for its growers.

“For those growers who have been able to grow good yields, they’ll be doing very well, and for those growers who have had more challenging conditions on orchard, this will help,” he told Hort News. “But their overall returns are still going to be down, which is going to be challenging for them.”

In terms of recovering from the various adverse weather events, Mathieson says it’s still early days – overall it’s looking good, but it has been patchy in some areas. However, he says it’s still much better than at the same time in the previous season.

Orchards hit by the frost appear to be recovering well, but Mathieson says for those orchards hit by Cyclone Gabrielle the road to recovery may take years for them to get back to full production.

“But what we are seeing is that if the weather gods are kind, the chances are that the 24/25 crop will see the volumes of fruit produced back to what they were in 2021,” he says.

Quality Improvement

It was not only the weather that has seen returns to growers fall in the last couple of years, it was the poor quality of some of the fruit that caused problems.

One of the reasons given for this was the labour shortages that arose during Covid, meaning that fruit was picked hurriedly. This resulted in fruit being damaged and creating problems for Zespri’s customers with threats that unless quality was improved there would consequences.

Zespri quickly undertook a major project to sort this out and Mathieson says the feedback from customers is much more positive. He says with the lifting of Covid restriction, the industry has been able to employ a more stable and high quality workforce. He adds that, in addition to this, Zespri has been working with supply chain managers to audit and manage the fruit right through to market.

“For example, before Covid we had quality technicians on the ships carrying our fruit, but this was stopped during Covid,” Mathieson explains. “But this is now back in place and having people to accurately monitor the fruit on the ships is making a difference. This is all about ensuring that only the best quality fruit reaches our consumers.”