The best fruit and veges for Kiwis
There is little difference in quality between the fruit and vegetables Kiwis pick in supermarket aisles and what is exported.
The assurance comes after a Beef + Lamb leader said New Zealanders enjoyed export quality lamb after claims they received only leftover products. Most of the vegetables grown were eaten in New Zealand, Horticulture New Zealand chief executive Mike Chapman said. ‘‘You can buy the best vegetables grown in New Zealand, because that’s where the majority of them are sold.’’
The export market for vegetables was small, apart from some onions, tomatoes and potatoes. A KPMG-produced report for Horticulture New Zealand calculated the value of domestic vegetables to be $1.26 billion, compared with vegetable exports at $615 million.
The value of New Zealand horticultural products exceeded $8b for the first time in 2016. That included $5b of exports mostly from kiwifruit, wine and apples going to 124 countries. Kiwifruit is graded in packing facilities because higher grade fruit commanded a higher price in the export market. Some of this fruit went overseas while some was sold in New Zealand, Chapman said.
A Zespri spokesman said that it sold up to 300,000 trays of export quality ‘class 1’ kiwifruit domestically each year, and up to a million trays of export-quality gold kiwifruit. Not all kiwifruit sold in New Zealand is class one as there may be some cosmetic differences, but all export and domestic fruit with the Zespri or Family Kiwi brand is sourced from the same orchards under the same standards for food safety, orchard practices, taste, and handling.
Fruit grown for the export market also had to meet criteria around size, shape, colour and taste in order to qualify and that criteria varied depending on the type of fruit and customer specification. Some growers sold all of their fruit in New Zealand while others concentrated more on the export market, Chapman said.
New Zealand Apples and Pears chief executive Alan Pollard said there was a lot of misconception between domestic and exported fruit, but there was no difference in quality between the markets.