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 kiwifruit variety SunGold is this season set to overtake the traditional green Haywards variety for the first time.
Zespri chairman Bruce Cameron told Rural News that 79 million trays of SunGold will be sold this year versus 70 million trays of Haywards. This marks a “huge breakthrough” for the industry because it was SunGold that “rescued” it from the ravages of PSA in 2010, he says.
It’s great news for New Zealand because Zespri holds the plant variety rights for SunGold but not for green kiwifruit.
“Whilst we put a lot of promotion and marketing into green kiwifruit, we don’t hold the IP for Hayward green and we are competing with the Chileans and Australian’s in the northern hemisphere,” he told Rural News.
On top of SunGold now dominating, Zespri expects kiwifruit exports to be closing in on $5 billion by 2025, Cameron says.
“We are sitting at about $3b now in 2019 and our growth projections based on the 700ha we will release for the next three years will produce revenue of about $4.5b.”
The growth is part of a planned Zespri strategy dating back to the PSA days -- not a commodity bubble. While Zespri is reaping the financial benefits of SunGold, it is not resting on its laurels and will trial a new variety of red kiwifruit in NZ and Singapore. Red kiwifruit are relatively easy to grow but the challenge has been to develop a red variety with a sufficiently long shelf life.
“It’s a different fruit to handle as opposed to SunGold, but I think the challenge we have as an industry is to overcome those. It could be three to five years before we have faith in it and understand its behaviour through the supply chain.”
In Asia, where the fruit is likely to be exported, red is a lucky colour. “So any red kiwifruit is looked upon as a very lucky fruit.”
The kiwifruit industry’s future looks good and it gets many accolades, Cameron says. But it must remain vigilant and is constantly analysing risks on- and offshore. Biosecurity and proper handling of kiwifruit on the home front can result in problems in markets.
“It’s not just the trade war between the US and China,” he says. “We are cognisant of that and other geo-political issues, but there is a full matrix of issues we are analysing and keeping our ears to the ground on.”
Like many manufacturers around the world, European agricultural machinery and tractor manufacturers are currently operating in a difficult market environment. But they are heading to the world’s largest agricultural machinery event in Hanover next month with a degree of cautious optimism.
Established in 2021, the John Deere Technician of the Year Awards champion the important contribution parts and service technicians make to the Australian and New Zealand agriculture, construction and forestry industries.
Beef + Lamb New Zealand (B+LNZ) is calling on farmers from all regions to take part in the final season of the Sheep Poo Study aiming to build a clearer picture of how facial eczema (FE) affects farms across New Zealand.
New Zealand is closer to eradicating bovine TB than ever before, but possums remain a threat, says Beef + Lamb New Zealand.
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters has joined the debate around the proposed sale of Fonterra’s consumer and related businesses, demanding answers from the co-operative around its milk supply deal with the buyer, Lactalis.
The ACT Party says media reports that global dairy giant Nestle has withdrawn from the Dairy Methane Action Alliance shows why New Zealand needs to rethink its approach to climate.
OPINION: Ageing lefty Chris Trotter reckons that the decision to delay recognition of Palestinian statehood is more than just a fit…
OPINION: A mate of yours truly recently met someone at a BBQ who works at a big consulting firm who spent…