Quality fruit and record amounts of it – with strong demand from international markets – is how Zespri chief executive Dan Mathieson described this year’s kiwifruit harvest at a media gathering at Fieldays.

But with the harvest finishing he also pointed to future challenges facing the industry.

Dan says the taste of Hayward green is at the best levels they’ve seen for the last four-five years.

“This is being attributed to really great growing conditions, sunlight hours, and work growers have put in on-orchard to expose fruit to maximum light, and also some girdling techniques they’re putting in place,” says Dan.

“With SunGold – early fruit has a really good taste this season, so we’re really pleased about the quality outcome so far. And fruit loss is tracking at very low levels.”

And with fruit now in all of Zespri’s major international markets, Dan says sales of Hayward green are tracking a couple of million trays ahead of last year while SunGold is about 10 million trays ahead – “so there is very strong demand”.

He attributes this to Zespri’s efforts in the last five years to build very strong partnerships with their retail customers and getting excellent shelf-space through its supermarket channels.

“This exposes the kiwifruit category to more consumers – to get them to try the fruit, enjoy the fruit and come back wanting more. And we’re seeing that trend continue into 2018.”

Crop volumes are up – compared to last year when NZ Green volumes dropped 20 per cent due to weather conditions. Dan says SunGold will reach 66 million trays this season; Hayward green will be in the high-70 millions of trays.

“Last year we had major customers say: ‘Hey, that’s not enough’ but this year we’re going to have more fruit for them, which is going to help our retail programmes.”

And markets are responding well. “Europe is doing very well. They had a lot of frost damage in the Italian season, the non-NZ supply season in 2017, so we’ve come in to a relatively empty market.

“We’ve also put a lot more SunGold into Europe. Prior, our previous licensed variety Hort16A didn’t go so well in Europe – the taste was a bit sweet. SunGold has a much more balanced profile in term of taste composition and the Europeans tend to like it better.”

Zespri’s also changed its retail model in Japan. “We’re now partnering much more closely with our end-retail customers than ever before.

“Before we tended to sell to our distributors then we’d run parallel marketing programmes. Now we’re running fully integrated marketing and sales programmes with the retailer at that customer interface, at that point of purchase; I think that’s really demonstrating much stronger growth than we’ve seen prior.”

This year Zespri will sell a total of 26 million trays of kiwifruit into Japan – up from 24 million last year. “For SunGold it will be about 14 million and about 10-12 million of green.”

But China is Zespri’s biggest market – to buy about 27 million trays of fruit. “And that will have a much higher percentage of gold. The Chinese demand for gold has been really, really strong – almost stronger than every other market and very good value as well.”

Zespri also expects good volumes in its non-NZ supply locations this year. “Weather-permitting we’ll be able to double our SunGold 2018 crops.

“In Italy we’ve got just over 3000ha of SunGold in the ground. We planted 1600ha of SunGold there over the last two years, so that fruit will start to come on-line soon.”

But there are challenges ahead. A seasonal labour shortage in the Bay of Plenty kiwifruit industry had the Ministry of Social Development declared the region needed an extra 1200 workers for harvesting.

“We’ve been able to fill about 600 of those vacancies,” says Dan. “That’s certainly something we’re going to have to address as our volumes grow, from next year and beyond,” says Dan.

“New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Incorporated – the representative kiwifruit body – is working closely with government for a long-term solution.

“There is no silver bullet; there are a lot of things we’ll have to do to ensure a good supply of labour.

“We need good accommodation for workers across the industry; we need to look at how we encourage people to come into the industry versus other areas demanding labour; and ensure our profile is well-seen and out there across local workers but also backpackers; and, of course, topping up with Recognised Seasonal Employer workers.”

The industry employs 18,000 people but by 2030 this is forecast to grow to 29,000. “So we need a lot more people to come into the industry at all levels. The more work we can do with tertiary educators the better.”

And finding good land to grow more SunGold – with access to water – is something the industry is much focused on.

“We’re going to licence 700ha of SunGold every year for the next five years, so that’s 3500ha. We did the first tranche of that this year. Prior we had two tranches of 400ha,” says Dan.

“We’re going to look at that [release] every year and if we start to see a slowdown in our sales and market we’ll moderate those numbers, depending on the environment.”

Dan says the closer an orchard is to good water supply the better. “The further you have to go to get good water supply, the more expensive it is to run and operate these orchards.”

And climate change will mean in the long term growers will have to adapt to changing growing conditions while Zespri looks at different varieties.

“The kiwifruit industry is a very innovative group of people and I’m sure they’ll find ways to grow fruit in different conditions.

“But even now we’re seeing changes year-on-year; fruit coming a bit earlier or later – growers have to adapt and learn to deal with that.

“Our strategy is to have the world’s best quality kiwifruit available for 12 months of the year, so when our customers around the world want kiwifruit they come to Zespri and we’re their one-stop-shop for all of it.

“So we have to look at different varieties that can grow in different locations. Not just here in NZ – but offshore as well.”

Plus biosecurity is another risk for Zespri’s growth plans. “We’ve recovered from Psa-V but we still live with Psa every day – that’s a huge investment in effort and financial resource to keep our fruit growing in the Psa environment.

“But there’s other pests and diseases we have to be careful of – the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug is a good example. KVH manages biosecurity for our industry and is running research and raising awareness.”