Gold fruit selling well in Europe
The impacts of the vine disease Psa-V had created uncertainty around crop volumes, but while Te Puke growers have been hard hit, those in other regions had good yields and the growing conditions have produced fruit with high dry matters which translates to great taste.
While Zespri won’t make an official forecast until August, Lain says it looks as though growers could expect an orchard gate return of around $9 or more a tray for gold this season. There will be many growers who have no income from gold as their vines have been removed because of Psa-V and for others this will be their last harvest of the highly susceptible variety Hort16A.
Sales of green fruit are also strong with predictions of between $3.80 and $4 a tray.
This year’s harvest of green fruit has been around 70 million trays, down from 76 million last year. The green organic crop dropped from 3.5 million last year to 3 million this season, but Lain says those decreases are due to normal seasonal variations, not to Psa-V.
When the 22 million tray gold crop is added, that brings tray numbers for the 2012 harvest to 95 million.
Despite the financial crisis in Europe, sales of Zespri green, gold and organic kiwifruit were ahead of the same time last year. Sales were also going well in Japan and Asia.
“The global financial crisis is putting pressure on households in Europe but we are in the food sector, which is not a bad place to be at a time like this. Kiwifruit is part of many people’s regular food purchase and 30 per cent of our customers account for 80 per cent (by volume) of our fruit sales. Many buy it for health reasons.”
However, summer fruit are about to come on the market in Europe and it remains to be seen how that will impact on New Zealand kiwifruit sales, he says.
This season’s growing conditions have created great tasting fruit, aided by the 70 per cent premium Zespri gives to growers to encourage them to use growing techniques which promote high dry matter, which results in good tasting fruit.
Source: www.sunlive.co.nz