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.
Zespri chief executive Dan Mathieson says kiwifruit fits perfectly into that scenario, causing strong demand in all its markets.
Mathieson says sales growth has been strong again this year: 150 million trays, up from about 120 million trays last year.
A lot of that is driven by the Sungold variety, and there is good growth also in Zespri green.
“Looking long term, we see that trend continuing with consumers wanting great products, great food items that are filled with nutrition,” Mathieson told Hort News.
“Kiwifruit is a real king in that space with all the vitamins and fibre and the nutritional elements it has versus other fruits. Based on that trend we see strong demand.”
He says their target group of consumers tend to be very health conscious, which is not region-specific but tends to be across the board. Zespri is getting good growth in both green and gold in Asia, with China going very well.
“It’s going well in Japan and they are once again our number-one market in Asia this year. We are also seeing great growth in Korea and have seen the duties start to gradually come down.
“We used to pay 45% duty on our exports to Korea, but with NZ’s free trade agreement with them the duties have started to come off and we have been able to offer our kiwifruit to consumers at a more attractive price and that has helped drive demand.
“At the same time, Taiwan is doing well and is now our number-one consumption market per capita in the world.”
European consumers have always been strong supporters of Zespri green, but Mathieson says consumers there are now starting to be attracted to Sungold. He believes this is because Sungold has a slightly sweeter taste and is easy to eat.
“France is going well and continues to be a high growth market for us. In the last couple of years, it has been a real performer in the European region. And we are also seeing good growth in all our major markets in Spain, the Benelux region, Germany and Italy.”
