Ōpōtiki grower wins 2025 Kiwifruit Innovation Award
Brett Wotton, an Eastern Bay of Plenty kiwifruit grower and harvest contractor, has won the 2025 Kiwifruit Innovation Award for his work to support lifting fruit quality across the industry.
The event will show patrons where their annual $15 million plus investments are being spent.
Zespri general manager marketing and innovation, Carol Ward, says innovation is a huge part of the industry with significant investment from Zespri, along with the NZ government and industry. Zespri wants to share this work with its community and hear their ideas about where innovation could go in the future.
“We want to show our growers and industry what’s coming up and the future challenges we’re tackling. The focus for the past few years has been on developing tools and techniques to grow profitably with Psa – now we’re turning our focus back to other areas again and we want to bring industry along with us.
“And it’s not all one way – we want to know what direction our industry thinks we should be heading in,” says Ward.
The brand’s investment in innovation over the past 15 years has contributed $1.57 billion in sales over the last year.
“Innovation has given our growers the world’s leading kiwifruit varieties and the tools to grow the best kiwifruit in the world, as well as a world-class supply chain. We want to show the industry how we’re building on this for the future and supporting the strong growth ahead,” says Ward.
The Symposium will be held at the ASB Arena, Mt Maunganui on Thursday 29 October. This will be followed by the Hayward Medal Dinner in the same venue, where the industry celebrates its finest people with the presentation of the 2015 Fresh Carrier Hayward Medal.
Workshop topics include:
Optimising knowledge transfer within the Zespri supply chain – Dr Matt Adkins
Taste: where to next? – Dr Greg Clark
Health: do consumers really care? – Dr Juliet Ansell
Biosecurity: the great unknown –Dr Elaine Gould
Beyond Hayward- the future of the green category – Bryan Parkes
Productivity: how much is too much? – Dr David Armour
The early bird ticket package for the symposium and dinner is $150 and is available until 30 September. Tickets to the conference are $50 each.
For more information and a copy of the full programme, check out www.zesprievents.co.nz
