Helping develop, grow markets
While NZ Avocado is not directly involved in selling fruit, it does have a significant role in supporting exporters to develop and grow markets.
Avocados will replace dairy on a 405ha farm on the shores of the Kaipara Harbour.
The Overseas Investment Office (OIO) has paved the way for reportedly New Zealand’s biggest avocado orchard, to be planted at Tapora, in lower Northland.
Harbour Edge Avocados will be 50% owned by Warkworth-based capsicum operation Southern Paprika, which is partly owned by Levarht in the Netherlands. There is other New Zealand ownership in the new venture. The OIO has given approval for the Dutch investors to take a greater share.
The OIO decision says the land meets key soil type and climatic criteria for a successful consistent avocado production.
Southern Paprika will sell the avocados on the export and domestic markets. Harbour Edge anticipates 90% of all avocados produced on the land by 2026/27 will be exported.
Avocado consumption globally has been growing steadily year on year, the OIO decision says. The Japan, Korea, India and China markets have been identified as having strong growth opportunity.
The ‘substantial and identifiable benefit to New Zealand’ identified by the OIO included jobs, increased export receipts, added productivity and walking access.
Planting is planned for 295ha of the land which is suitable for avocados while the remainder will be used for other horticultural crops. Planting is set to be completed by the end of 2020-21.
Southern Paprika – so named because the northern hemisphere name for capsicum is paprika – is New Zealand’s largest single site glasshouse grower of capsicums. It doesn’t make the spice of the same name.
It was formed in 1998 with Levarht looking for a solution to supply customers in Japan from New Zealand during the northern hemisphere winter. Southern Paprika grows capsicums year-round.
The winner of the 2025 Hawke’s Bay/Wairarapa Dairy Industry Awards enjoys the variety of work farming offers and the ability to improve each season.
A company growing and processing seaweed with known methane-busting properties at a facility in Bluff is expanding internationally but New Zealand cattle farmers won't be getting the product anytime soon.
Through its new partnership with New Zealand Landcare Trust, Fonterra has committed to funding ten $25,000 grants for wetland restoration in communities across the country.
The chair of the Dairy Environmental Leaders (DEL) says the country's dairy farmers are at the forefront of environmental management.
On the edge of the hot, dry Takapau plains, Norm and Del Atkins have cultivated a small but exceptional herd of 60 Holstein Friesian cows within their mixed breed herd of 360 dairy cows.
The DairyNZ board and management are currently trying to determine whether, and to what degree, their farmer levy payers will support any increase in their levy contributions.
OPINION: Prime Minister Christopher Luxon sometimes can't escape his own corporate instinct for evasion, and in what should have been…
OPINION: Shane 'Matua' Jones, crusader against all things woke, including "woke banks", couldn't have scripted it better when his NZ…