Cyclone Gabrielle: Hawke's Bay Orchardists Still Recovering
Three and a half years on from when Cyclone Gabrielle hit Hawke's Bay, some orchardists in the region are still receiving counselling to help them deal with the trauma they suffered.
That's how Richard Burke, the chief executive of Leaderbrand, one of the largest companies that produce leafy green and salad crops, sums up the grief that the weather has caused them during the past year.
He says a series of floods has had a cumulative effect on their ability to maintain supply and the problem has been further exacerbated by the damage to roads and other infrastructure. He says the degree of damage often depended on where people were located, with his company's growing sites at Matamata and Pukekohe suffering as much as their base in Gisborne.
"We are still battling a bit at our site in Pukekohe and whilst they didn't get hit with cyclones, it has had a lot of really tough weather - so we are not quite where we would like to be there," Burke told Hort News.
Gisborne and the South Island particularly had a good year. However, he points out growers with annual crops such as potatoes, corn, kumara and squash will take another season to get another crop growing.
Burke says there have been some high prices for vegetables, but these are now starting to ease as more supply comes on stream.
"At this time of the year when we are doing a lot of prep for our winter crops, we are pretty lucky that we have had some good weather," he explains. "It's given us the ability to get some land ready for winter planting. I would say we are in an okay position as we head in to winter as we have got crop in the ground and we have land worked."
One of the consequences of the cyclones and floods has been a drop in the supply of vegetables and some crazy prices such as $12 cauliflowers - a fact which has gained much media attention.
The result is that some people have stopped buying fresh veggies and many have turned to frozen product. Much of which is imported and is cheaper at the moment, but Burke says this will change. He predicts that the cost of frozen product will rise over the next couple of years.
Burke is determined to stop the trend away from fresh and his company is making a big push to make vegetables more affordable.
"We know that we have lost ground to other alternatives and the challenge is about how to get fresh back into people's minds and that means our industry needs to be more competitive," he explains.
The answer to that, Burke believes, is to scale up the business and take the costs out of the equation. He says this is a global trend and is happening here, making it difficult for small suppliers to meet the demand on a daily or weekly basis and keep their businesses going.
But key to this, Burke says, is having quality infrastructure that enables growers to get their product to market on time - a problem which has been dramatically highlighted recently in New Zealand.
