New Zealand’s kiwifruit sector is facing an uphill battle ahead of their busiest time of the year. As the industry’s main season hones into view, the two-pronged threat of Covid-19 and severe staff shortages are already hampering efforts to get another record crop to market.
Having enough people to pick and pack the fruit is not a new conundrum, and the staff shortage numbers vary depending on who you speak to. According to Zespri – the world’s largest marketer of kiwifruit – the shortfall compared to this time last year is around 20 per cent. However, looking in the halls of post-harvest operators that pack the fruit, who are now in full recruitment mode ahead of this year’s main season in the Eastern and Western Bay of Plenty, and that number is considerably higher, with one source suggesting they are 65 per cent down.
Colin Bond, chief executive of New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Incorporated: “Our biggest constraint is the closed borders - 24,000 seasonal workers is normally what we require for harvest, and 6,000 of those are back-packers. Without those 6,000, the industry has had to think about how we get through a record harvest with fewer people. To use the government’s terminology, we need to flatten the curve so we can average out the amount of trays we pick every week.”
Source: stuff.co.nz
