Citrus NZ urges Kiwis to support local growers

It comes from the chairman of Citrus NZ, Ian Albers, who says a key challenge for NZ growers is competing with imported citrus, mainly from Australia which arrive on the market at about the same time as local fruit.

About 98% of the citrus grown in this country goes on the local market with just a small quantity being exported – mainly lemons going to Japan and the USA and several other small markets

“I think we produce pretty good citrus here and so we really want consumers to get behind that and make sure that they support us,” Albers told Rural News.

According to Albers, overall, this season is looking reasonably good. He says the previous few years have been challenging with Covid, Cyclone Gabrielle and continuing wet weather which has impacted on things such as tree health. But he says 2024 produced a good spring and there have been pretty good growing conditions in the two main citrus growing regions – Kerikeri and Gisborne.

“In the case of Gisborne, we had a good spring and then a good early summer period right through until boxing day. Then it was a bit cooler and wetter than what we would have liked but overall, it wasn’t too bad. From what I have seen out in the district, fruit size and quality look good and we are seeing some good flavour in the mandarins which we have just started harvesting,” he says.

Albers says in the case of Kerikeri, they were dry right through the summer until recently and they had a particularly heavy crop last year. He says the satsuma mandarin crop there will be slightly down on last years but points out that that citrus can be little bit biannual and have a big crop one year and lesser crop the next year.

He says the harvesting season usually starts off with limes in February and March, but the big harvest is the satsuma mandarins.

“Overall, despite the regional differences, I think the citrus crop will be slightly up on last year."

Innovation Challenges

Ian Albers says getting innovation into citrus packhouses has challenges because they must pack multiple and quite different fruits of differing shapes and sizes. He says it’s easier for the kiwifruit sector to increase innovation because those packhouses are just packing a single fruit which is uniform in shape and size.

“In the case of citrus, we have everything from grapefruit, lemons, limes and mandarins which all have their own idiosyncrasies in terms packing and grading. Our industry is simply not big enough to have single packhouses for one of these fruits,” he says.

But Albers points out that in packhouses in some of the larger citrus growing regions in the world such as Australia and USA, it is possible to have dedicated packing systems for specific citrus fruits.

Editor's note: Since the end of May 2025, Tam Jex-Blake has taken on the role of interim chair at Citrus NZ.