NZ: Gold kiwifruit returns disappointing
Mr West said it was the first time he had full crops since Psa devastated his vines in 2010.
The gold kiwifruit returns were "awful" and had plummeted following record volumes and the forecasts "were horrible". However, there was "no option other than to be horrible".
"When Hort 16a got Psa, Zespri offered the G3 licence to everyone as a swap but then the green kiwifruit growers said it was not fair ... the green returns have been very poor. So they offered it to everybody to get us out of the woods so to speak and I actually think they allocated more hectares of licence than would be ideal."
However the green returns had been good but if you were not going to produce more than 10,000 trays a hectare, which was hard to do, "you are not going to be making any money out of green even at $6 a tray".
Last week Zespri chairman Peter McBride said gold returns fell to $73,890 per hectare and $9.80 per tray, owing in part to the remarkable rebound in gold production, led by Gold3.
It sold 69 million trays of Zespri green kiwifruit at the highest-ever average per hectare return for the industry of $53,884 and a very strong average per tray return of $6.01.
Total gold supply increased from 11.1 million trays in 2013/14 to 18.6 million trays in 2014/15.
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