Picker pickle: $100m at risk
Hawke’s Bay could lose $100 million due to a lack of workers for the upcoming apple season, a Hawke’s Bay orchard owner believes.
Yummy Fruit Company general manager Paul Paynter said the 2000 Recognised Seasonal Employment (RSE) workers from Pacific nations entering the country from thismonth would be nowhere near enough.
Paynter has 63 apple and stonefruit orchards in Hawke’s Bay. He said he was ‘‘terrified’’ for the upcoming apple season, with picking beginning next month.
The stonefruit season had been a success, he said, as the timing worked perfectly for students who were on their summer holidays, but the same couldn’t be said about the apple season.
‘‘It’s the backpackers we miss the most. Although they would only stay for about a month, they were consistent.’’
It was hard to convince potential workers from outside the region tomove to Hawke’s Bay, he said.
‘‘They generally want to stay in their own communities, andwe’ve got a housing crisis, so why would you want to uproot your family and move somewhere, where there’s no housing?
‘‘I’ve got 63 orchards and had about 40-50 inquiries from outside Hawke’s Bay and I’ve got maybe two coming to work for me.’’
Paynter said the region needed at least ‘‘10,000 people to magic out of nowhere’’ in order for a successful apple season.
‘‘It’s certainly not plain sailing, there are issues to contend with and people are not going to relocate, we could lose
$100 million out of the community.
‘‘We miss the backpackers, we miss the tourists. Backpackers make up two-thirds of the industry, they make a huge difference.’’
Chief executive of Mr Apple, Andrew van Workum, was ‘‘quite concerned’’ about the situation and said it was going to be a ‘‘very challenging year’’.
‘‘We, along with a number of other players in the industry are doing an awful lot in the space of attracting what staff we can.’’
Van Workum said he couldn’t comment on how successful the work was – ‘‘We’ll know if they turn up,’’ he said.
Another grower, Leon Stallard, runs a 30-hectare orchard south of Havelock North and said he was concerned as to where his workers would come from.
‘‘We’ve always relied on seasonal workers, which aren’t just New Zealanders or locals, but also a lot of overseas travellers, but they’re not available.
‘‘I think everyone is concerned that they’re not going to harvest all of their crop. Everyone’s
‘‘We miss the backpackers, we miss the tourists.’’
Paul Paynter Yummy Fruit Company generalmanager
thinking about what crop do we leave behind, what don’t we harvest – so that’s going to affect the financial viability of the industry.’’
Stallard said the assumption that workers in the industry weren’t paid enough, was false.
‘‘I had some backpackers on $42 an hour, but then everyone goes, ‘Well, it’s really hard work.’ Years ago it wasn’t hard work, and the trees are smaller these days. When did working for a living ever become hard?’’
Stallard said he needed at least 24 workers to work in the orchard and predicted he’d get 15-16, if he was lucky.
One of the largest apple growers in the region, John Bostock, would not comment on the situation at this time.
Chief executive of New Zealand Apples and Pears, Alan Pollard, said the first 156 seasonal workers arrived in the country on January 17.
‘‘There’s 13 flights coming in every four days, then they’ll do their two weeks’ quarantine, so they’ll be out in time for the season, but then we need to allocate across industries.’’
Pollard said Hawke’s Bay usually generated $600-$700 million, but estimated with the labour shortage between $100-$200 million could be lost from the region.
‘‘The Government’s view is that we’ll be able to harvest our crops on this idea that there’s plenty of New Zealanders available to do it – but there’s not. The significant patches of employment tend to be in the larger metropolitan areas, and they’re not moving at all.’’
Interim chief executive officer at Summerfruit New Zealand, Richard Palmer, said there was very little shortage of workers across the country for stonefruit, but the heavy rain had seriously affected crops in Otago.
‘‘The weather has been very dry in Hawke’s Bay, which bodes well for the fruit, but in Otago it’s a different story,’’ Palmer said.
He said it was still too early to determine how substantial the damage to the Otago cherry crops would be.
‘‘Everything has just come grinding to a halt due to the rain, which is devastating for growers and for everyone who has turned out to support the cherry harvest in the region.’’
Palmer said some growers had fallen short of stonefruit pickers due to accommodation issues in Hawke’s Bay and Otago, but for the most part, the fruit was still being picked.