Kiwifruit volumes set to be much bigger than last year

The upcoming kiwifruit season has the potential to be a year of strong growth across all kiwifruit offerings this year, with Zespri expecting to ship around 193 million trays of kiwifruit to markets around the world.

At the same time the kiwifruit marketing organisation is closely monitoring the current disruption to international shipping, though Zespri is not affected by the problems in the Red Sea, instead shipping via the Panama Canal, says chief executive Dan Mathieson.

While it’s still early in the season, he says Zespri’s latest supply estimate reflects the positive growing conditions seen across New Zealand in recent months. This season’s crop will be a significant increase on the 133 million New Zealand trays shipped last season and also up on the 175 million trays shipped in 2021.

Mathieson says the key focus this year is delivering consistently good quality fruit to customers and consumers throughout the season to help maximise the value returned to growers and communities.

“It’s been a far more settled growing environment compared to the last couple of seasons when growers were facing a number of challenges, including the impact of COVID-19, the significant labour shortage in 2022 and the many climatic events that New Zealand experienced in 2023.

“While it’s still early, the crop is looking excellent and there’s a lot of excitement and optimism in the industry.

“That excitement is shared by our customers who are keenly anticipating having a lot more kiwifruit to meet the strong demand we’re seeing across our markets.”

Mathieson says managing the increased volume of fruit throughout the supply chain and delivering consistently good quality fruit was the key consideration in the industry’s season planning process.

“We’re trying to make sure we’re striking the right balance of having a good source of early season fruit to capitalise on early season sales opportunities, and having fruit that stores well so that we can have a consistent flow of fruit through the season and minimise late season quality issues.”

The Kiwi Brothers will again be a central piece of this season’s marketing activities to help move fruit quickly. “Our marketing teams have been working really hard on developing a number of great campaigns based around our award-winning Kiwi Brothers to ensure we’re able to keep our sales rates up throughout the year.

“After a tough couple of years there’s a lot of excitement about the year ahead and we’re well prepared as we get the season started through harvest over the coming weeks,” Mathieson says.