Kiwifruit growers vote on plan to foil China’s cheats

We’ll continue working to address the challenge of unauthorised plantings of Gold3 in China.

Carol Ward, Zespri

The country’s kiwifruit growers have made a strong showing at the ballot box in voting on marketer Zespri’s plan to try to counter rogue growing in China of a Zespri-owned gold fruit variety.

Voting closed at midday yesterday, with early indications the voting return was about 59 per cent and about 75 per cent in terms of weighted production.

Zespri is owned by 2000-plus growers.

Carol Ward, Zespri’s chief grower, industry and sustainability officer, said the early voting indication was similar to the response at the last Zespri producer vote in 2019.

The result should be announced late next week after postal votes are counted and final auditing complete.

“Our focus remains protecting the interests of New Zealand growers and regardless of the outcome of the vote, we’ll continue working to address the challenge of unauthorised plantings of Gold3 in China which remains an important market for Zespri,” Ward said.

Zespri’s plan is to hold tightly controlled commercial trials with Chinese growers. Zespri is proposing a one-season trial starting this year, contracting about 20 Chinese growers to supply up to 200,000 trays of SunGold.

The fruit would be contractually procured and quality would be monitored in the orchards and a postharvest facility, with Zespri marketing and selling in China fruit that met its standards. If the trial was successful, Zespri would go back to its New Zealand owners to ask them to back a second trial starting next March.

Zespri chief executive Dan Mathieson, who has been in China working with growers and local and central governments there, last week told the Herald he believed the proposal had a lot of support but “it’s also clear there are those that don’t support it”.

The proposal requires the support of 75 per cent of growers who vote.

The intellectual property for the gold variety, branded as SunGold and known in the sector as G3, is owned by Zespri and is its best-selling kiwifruit. The Mount Maunganui-based company believes at least 5500ha of the fruit is being grown without authorisation in China.

Mathieson said Zespri expected Chinese counterfeiting of the highly successful brand to grow rapidly now in China as volumes of the variety and consumer demand swelled.

China is Zespri’s biggest market, alongside Japan.

“When our New Zealand season finishes there is five months of space for supply to come in from the northern hemisphere and from China production. At that point we see a lot of counterfeiting of the Zespri brand — putting the Zespri brand on other fruit from other origins and selling it as Zespri fruit,” Mathieson said.

“The second issue we’re going to see is variable quality undermining the confidence of consumers in the SunGold.”