Discovering Zespri secrets for golden kiwis

Apata, Trevelyan's, DMS, Mount Pack and Eastpack - these are names that most of Italian kiwi specialists will not know, but they are some of the leading New Zealander companies where Zespri processes and stocks its produce, and the G3 golden variety (SunGold) in particular. These comanies process 6 out of 10 kiwis (60%) of those sold by Zespri.

Last week, these companies received the visit of a team of 11 specialists from the second producer country in the world - Italy. The visit lasted one week and involved people from SunGold Zespri supplier warehouses in Emilia-Romagna and Latina.

Group photo of the Italian specialists visiting New Zealand.

Accompanied by the Italian Zespri Global Supply team, the group visited the companies to compare kiwi post-harvesting management.

The group was impressed by two elements in particular - the first one is the deep knowledge their New Zealand colleagues have on kiwis. The second one concerned the level of cooperation between producers and warehouses.

These are great ideas to bring over to Italy. With the assistance of the Zespri technical team and thanks to an ongoing exchange with New Zealand suppliers, the team will work to implement the techniques observed in New Zealand with the objective of improving the quality of SunGold kiwis cultivated in Italy.