Summerfruit harvest finished

Tim Jones, the general manager of Cromwell-based 45 South cherry orchards and packhouse, says fruit quality was good but the Covid pandemic posed challenges.

"We had obviously labour challenges, we had logistical challenges with the lack of airfreight capacity out of the country," he told Hort News. "But we finished packing last week (early Feb) and, at this stage, we've had a reasonably successful season."

Jones says they had to thank the many young New Zealanders - school and university students - who came to the region to help pick the fruit.

"We probably didn't have quite enough people but the crop wasn't as big as it could have been so we just managed to get through."

He says their sales and marketing team have worked really hard on the logistics challenge and have pulled off a remarkable feat.

"By actually managing to get the fruit to market - in conjunction with our freight forwarding partners - they have done a really good job."

45 South is an export-oriented business selling premium fruit to mainly Asian markets.

Jones said it was a matter of working with the airlines that were able to provide freight-only planes.

"It's been basically an eight-month challenge to ensure that we had enough relationships in place and enough capacity to get our crops to market."

However, he says it was a reasonably dry summer.

"The fruit quality was a vast improvement this year on what we've had the last couple of years. Not only did we enjoy that, but our customers overseas enjoyed that too."

Simon Webb, of Cromwell's Webb's Orchard, told Hort News that fruit quality was high this season, across all varieties - but particularly peaches and nectarines.

Webb's enterprise, a family business more than a century old, runs a fruit stall that is a well-known landmark on the outskirts of the town, and also supplies domestic retail and online customers.

Webb says good sized fruit also made for consumer appeal.

“Very good quality this year and it’s been strong demand in the market too. Probably Hawkes Bay had a bit of a lighter crop, which is a bit tough on them. But in Central Otago here we’ve had a good crop of quality fruit.”

However, he agrees it had been a struggle to find staff, and orchards were having to offer incentives like free or cheap accommodation. He says it was important to have good accommodation and good facilities to start with, “not saying: ‘here’s a paddock for you to put a tent in’.”

Webb says they filled the overseas backpacker shortage with students, kiwis who decided to do a bit of fruit picking instead of an overseas holiday, and what he calls the “grey nomads” now that the youngsters were returning to school and university.

“It’s been a struggle to find staff, but we’ve had just enough.”

However, he says it put pressure on key staff having a lot of less experienced people around them, and there was also the social responsibility of managing teenagers.

“When you’ve got 15 year-old people out there picking fruit and doing big days, you’ve got to take a lot of care with them.”

Roger Brownlie, the chairman of Summerfruit NZ, says South Island growers “had a reasonable run” but without great volumes.

However, he told Hort News it was a ‘pretty tough’ season because of the labour woes.

“We got an allocation of RSE (Recognised Seasonal Employer workers), which was really good. So that’s been helpful. I think everyone’s used all the contacts they possibly can to get pickers but it has been hard work.”

But he adds that there are jobs that have been left behind that would normally get done that haven’t been done.

“It’s really about prioritising what is the most important at the time.”

Brownlie says labour costs have gone up.

“And with lower volumes it’s going to be very interesting to get through this next year.”

Summerfruit NZ chief executive Kate Hellstrom adds that cherry growers got through the season without any major weather events like the storms that effectively cut last season short.

Cherry exports for the year to date stood at 3.1 million kg compared to 2.5 million kg at this time last year.

Cherry exports for the year to date stood at 3.1 million kg compared to 2.5 million kg at this time last year.

However, she says while growers managed to get their fruit off the trees they certainly didn’t have the labour supply that they would have liked and quality will have suffered.

Hellstrom believes many growers would have done fewer picks at greater intervals, or even strip-picked all the fruit at once, which meant a higher proportion of fruit was picked either before or after it reached optimal ripeness.