Blueberries Could Be NZ's Next $150m Horticultural Export
Blueberries have the potential to become a major horticultural export, earning up to $150 million within the next three to five years.
The company says it will be looking to delivering the variety to more markets as volume grows in the coming years. RubyRed is a new variety and in NZ this year around 100 hectares of a total of 415 hectares planted have been available for sale.
The company says during the early sales trials in Singapore, they found that over its relatively short selling window, Zespri RubyRed Kiwifruit attracted new customers to the kiwifruit category. It reports that this saw one in five purchases in 2019 and one in three in 2020 made by shoppers who had not purchased kiwifruit within the past 12 months.
Zespri says trials in all markets found RubyRed consistently attracted younger shoppers more than other Zespri varieties.
RubyRed kiwifruit is described as having a delicious, naturally berry-sweet taste, a smooth, edible skin, and its vibrant red flesh stems from anthocyanins - a naturally occurring pigment. Zespri says RubyRed kiwifruit has high levels of Vitamin C but low GI, meaning it's suitable for consumers monitoring their blood sugar levels.
Breeding work began on developing the red kiwifruit variety in 1993, under the long-running new varieties breeding programme jointly run by Zespri and Plant & Food Research. It is now run as a joint venture by the Kiwifruit Breeding Centre.
After more than 10 years of research, extensive trials and plenty of taste-testing, the variety was commercialised in December 2019.
