Kiwifruit bound for China first

Poor weather has failed to put a dent into the kiwifruit harvest as Zespri prepares its first overseas shipment of the season.

Zespri chief operating officer Simon Limmer said the crop would be the second largest ever, behind last season’s record breaker of 129 million trays.

Volumes of green kiwifruit would be lower than last year, but SunGold was continuing to show strong growth. Fruit was a good size and sugar levels were holding up well.

Limmer said kiwifruit growth would continue over the next few years as the SunGold variety vines, which were first planted in 2012, came to full maturity.

Zespri president of global sales and marketing Dan Mathieson said Zespri kiwifruit would be sold in 59 countries this year, and the co-op planned to boost the amount it spent on sales and marketing. He said the first of the 46 refrigerated charter ships of the season from Port Tauranga would sail to China, a departure from tradition, since the first ship had always been to Japan. ’’This marks the increasing importance of the China market for the industry, with China and Japan now our two largest markets in the world.’’

By 2020, China will be the single largest market, surpassing Japan, with a predicted 22 per cent share of sales. Zespri will be hoping to avoid the dramas of last year starting in April when it had to put 1.7 million trays of kiwifruit on hold while it investigated whether some of the fruit had been contaminated by mechanical lubricant. Later in the year kiwifruit was held up at the Chinese border after it was found to be suffering from a fungus that caused it to rot. Zespri is lifting its sales and marketing efforts with the opening of new offices in Dubai and Los Angeles.