The Greek kiwi season started performing a lot better after a slower start in 2022, says Antonis Ioannidis, Sales Manger for Zeus Kiwi: “There has indeed been a slow start to our kiwi season. The reason for this is an aggressive approach in terms of pricing by both the Greek kiwi exporters as well as the Italians. People wanted to get rid of their stock as soon as possible to avoid the storage costs. This resulted in an oversupply on the market, while demand was relatively low in both the European and overseas markets. This situation lasted until the end of 2022 and even a bit at the start of 2023.”
Thankfully, this situation didn’t last for the full season, as supplies started decreasing after a while, Ioannidis explains. “By February of 2023, we started seeing improvements in the market. The big supply by the exporters that wanted to move fruit as soon as possible had run out. Now it remained a strange season, as we’d seen mostly smaller sized kiwis. But improvements started to show by this time. Right now we’re close to the end of our kiwi campaign. The last volumes will be sent in the final week of May. Our overseas shipments stopped in week 18.”
Next to exporting to their traditional markets, Ioannidis saw some real potential in South Africa and India this year, he states: “For Zeus, the United Kingdom is always one of the main markets, as we supply a vast majority of the supermarkets there. However, we’ve also seen a significant improvement in the South African market this year. The United States and Canada have always been part of our strategy for shipping kiwis. That said, not just for Zeus but for Greece as a whole, the Indian market has also proven to be a good alternative for kiwi exporters this year.”
Greek products are being sent to Italy straight from the farm, to then be sold as Italian grown produce. This isn’t any different for kiwis and regulations need to be put in place to stop it, Ioannidis thinks. “The fact that Greek kiwis are being sold as Italian has always been an issue, but it’s become a big problem over the past three or four years. Italy appears among the top 3 Greek export countries during past few years. when it comes to European kiwi export, but who knows how much of those are actually Greek kiwis. That has an impact on the Greek kiwi exports and the overall kiwi industry. There’s been a constant effort to form a national agency that defends the Greek kiwis. There’s lots of discussion to enforce strict regulations on exporting kiwis to Italy.”
A few years ago, Zeus started planting Yellow fleshed kiwi varieties along with our strategic partners. The kiwis are just about ready for the global stage: “Our yellow fleshed kiwi project is on the rise. We’ve seen new plantations and two newly patented varieties. Fruit has been well received among our key customers and we are really optimistic! They’ll be included in our marketing strategy, the only way for the Greek yellow fleshed kiwi to go, is up!” Ioannidis concludes.
For more information:
Antonis Ioannidis
Zeus Kiwi S.A.
Telephone: +30 2351 053559
Email: antonis@zeuskiwi.gr
www.zeuskiwi.gr