Labour snags hit quality

Speaking at the recent NZ Primary Industries Conference in Auckland, Zespri chief executive Daniel Mathieson says the lack of people across the supply chain has seen quality standards slip.

"This is a real serious issue," he told a panel discussion on labour challenges facing the farming sector.

"As agribusiness producers. we make our money by being the best in the world, with the best quality in the world," Mathieson says. "I think over the last two years, with the lack of people across the supply chain, we have seen our quality standards start to slip."

Mathieson believes this is starting to erode customer goodwill and value we can get in the marketplace.

The conference heard from Hort NZ that this season there would be a shortfall of 6,000 workers under the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme. While labour shortages remain a major challenge on farms, Mathieson believes it provides the agribusiness sector opportunities in two areas: helping temporary workers transition into full-time jobs; and getting the balance right between NZ workers and those coming into the country to work under RSE and other schemes.

He says the days of temporary workers are gone.

"It's probably not going to return, and we must face up to reality and start restructuring our businesses to take in more people on a permanent basis."

He says that's the "big disussion" Zespri is having with Kiwifruit growers.

"We don;t want people just turning up for a few months and then going somewhere else. We have to be sure they are actually coming, developing and learning new skills and then they stay and progress with the industry and company."

Mathieson says farmers and growers must first focus on NZ workers. However, he points out that they won't be enough.

"We have enormous growth ahead of us in all our businesses," he says. "NZ is a great country to supply the world but will need people to need to do that. We need to get a balance, between demonstrating a good healthy growth for the NZ workforce sector while getting a good balance of people coming into the country.

"We haven't got the balance right and the time has come now to reset and get that balance right."