Avocados set for major growth
... large commercial investors in Northland are converting dairy farms to avocado orchards and smaller orchards are maximising the productivity of their orchards. Ashby Whitehead NZ Avocado chairman
Dairy farms are being converted to avocado orchards in the Auckland and Northland regions as the industry gears up for major expansion.
Avocados achieved new records for volume and value in the 2016-17 season, and investors keen to capitalise on the trend for avocados are planning large scale plantings.
It was an exciting time to be growing avocados, NZ Avocado chairman Ashby Whitehead, said. ’’Demand for new trees has resulted in a near trebling of production at nurseries, large commercial investors in Northland are converting dairy farms to avocado orchards and smaller orchards are maximising the productivity of their orchards.’’
Dutch company Levarht was recently granted approval to invest in a joint venture to buy a former dairy farm near Kaipara Harbour and plant 100,000 trees by 2020-21.
This season avocado sales reached $198 million, an increase of $64m on last season and $62m higher than the previous record of $136m in 2013-14.
However NZ Avocado chief executive Jen Scoular warned that returns would slip back in the coming year before picking up again. The industry was still managing the biennial nature of the crop, where it was a case of feast one season and relative famine the next. But a combination of increased plantings, and better management including more trees planted per hectare should see fewer of the topsy turvy returns experienced up until 2012-13.
Between them, the industry and the Government are spending $4.2m on a programme to triple productivity to 12 tonnes per hectare. The five-year primary growth partnership (PGP) started in 2014. Scoular said the industry had a goal to reach a value of $275m by 2022-23, putting it the fourth ranked horticulture product behind kiwifruit, wine and apples.
‘‘We are part of an industry that has gone from $70m in value in 2013 to an impressive $200m in 2017. The Go Global programme gave us the platform as an industry to develop a strategy with audacious goals of quadrupling sales and trebling productivity in 10 years.
‘‘That strategy, and Crown investment has been implemented and resulted in fantastic growth in value right across the supply chain,’’ Scoular said.
The Ministry for Primary Industries has forecast that once export receipts are tallied to the end of June this year, export volumes and values will double to 5.1 million trays and $165m.
Scoular said that while Australia bought most New Zealand fruit, avocado orcharding was on the rise there, putting any growth in jeopardy.