Kiwifruit heads off to Japanese market

THE first of the new season’s kiwifruit set sail for Japan yesterday, with Zespri predicting volumes will be back to pre-Psa levels this year.

Total export returns for the 2014-15 year are expected to be $910.2 million, up from $800m for 2013-14, the year Psa had the biggest impact.

Zespri chief executive Lain Jager said the industry had made a ‘‘remarkable turnaround’’ since the destructive Psa virus had destroyed vines from 2010 onwards.

About 800 hectares of Psainfected gold variety Hort16A had to be replaced.

More than a third of kiwifruit orchards suffered some level of infection and the vine disease was responsible for about a 30 per cent fall in gold volume in 2012.

Some estimates put growers’ and packers’ losses at $885m.

The industry was forecasting a 2014-15 harvest of around 30 million trays of gold kiwifruit – 25 million of this Gold3 (marketed as Zespri SunGold) – surpassing the previous high of 29 million trays sold in the 2011 season.

The forecast gold volume this season has nearly doubled from around 18 million trays harvested last season, that figure reflecting how hard hit the industry was by Psa.

‘‘We are also looking forward to another great green [kiwifruit] crop this year, with more than 70m trays forecast from a total crop volume of around 108 million trays of premium Zespri kiwifruit,’’ Jager said.

‘‘The New Zealand industry continues along the Psa recovery pathway, transitioning from the previous gold variety Hort16A to Gold3 with 4593 licensed hectares in New Zealand,’’ he said.

Zespri has chartered 55 refrigerated ships – including five ships direct to Shanghai – and 8000 refrigerated containers to carry the 2015 Zespri harvest to 54 countries around the world.

Jager said Zespri was on track to sell more than 50 million trays of Gold3 in 2018.

The Ministry for Primary Industries predicts export returns of $1.11 billion by 2018, although Growers’ president Neil Trebilco has described that as an underestimate.

Zespri sales in China have grown at about 30 per cent per year over the last decade and are forecast to continue at around 20 per cent per annum until 2020, with China expected to be Zespri’s number one market in a few years’ time.