And promises should be kept. “We have to make more and more of an effort to keep those promises,” says Bert Barmans, general manager of Zespri Europe. That promise ensures a healthy and flavourful product. Zespri can put all of their attention to kiwi fruit, in part because kiwi fruit is their only product. “That means we know our product incredibly well, and that we can invest a lot to improve that product all the time.” Investments are made in the field of new varieties, but also in optimisation of the production and innovation in the field of storage and flavour. That was partly the reason steps have been made in storage in the last European season for kiwi SunGold. “We managed to continue the season longer than in previous years.”
From green to gold
Zespri is looking for and finding an increase in consumer sales. “The frequency with which consumers buy fruit is still increasing.” Zespri kiwi fruit is sold via all channels. “A lot of our product ends up in supermarkets, but it also ends up with wholesalers, and thus with retail traders.” Although the largest volume is marketed via retail, retail traders are very important for Zespri as well. “Retail traders and wholesalers are channels we appreciate because retail trade has an ambassador’s function for fruit and vegetables, which means they have that function for us as well.” Besides, Bert mentions a shift can be seen from green kiwi fruit to SunGold. The share of SunGold in the production in New Zealand has now surpassed the share of green. “The importance of SunGold is increasing in the production.” Zespri is also doing trials with red kiwi fruit, and they already have some programmes with the red fruit in a number of smaller markets. “That’s an innovation that’s definitely coming,” Bert concludes.