Kiwifruit bounces back!

The industry forecasts a harvest of about 30 million trays of Gold kiwifruit, surpassing the previous high of 29 million trays sold in the 2011 season.

Of this year's Gold crop, 25 million is Gold3 (marketed as Zespri SunGold), the new Psa-resistant crop brought in to replace the Hort16 variety devastated by the vine-killing disease.

Zespri's general manager supply chain, Blair Hamill, says Gold production is up from 18 million trays last year but a number of orchards are not in full production yet. Early adopters started grafting G3 in 2011-12 so some of those orchards are coming into full production.

"But a lot of grafting happened in 2013 so of the 4500ha of G3 in the ground, not all of it is in production yet. We are on track to do around 50 million trays by about 2018. So it's really exciting."

Overall the season is looking positive, he says, with an overall total of 108 million trays to be shipped, including about 72 million of Green. It is not a record season overall, but it is a return to pre-Psa volumes.

The first shipment left Tauranga for Japan on Saturday March 28, and three more vessels went last week to Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea and Europe; some are two country loads.

"We are on track – we are a little bit hand to mouth – a few cooler nights and the fruit will start to quickly mature and we will be away for the season."

Zespri is building markets for the increased production forecast for coming years. "We're building in developing markets, we've got huge growth still in China, we're confident we are developing and building markets over the next few years to cope with the rise in volumes of Gold," Hamill says.

The first kiwifruit charter ship for 2015 is set to sail from the Port of Tauranga tomorrow (Sunday March 28), marking the start of a season promising strong growth with volumes back to pre-Psa levels this season, Zespri's chief executive Lain Jager says.

The 2015 harvest began in orchards in Gisborne, Katikati and Te Puke last week and this year Zespri has chartered 55 refrigerated ships, including five ships direct to Shanghai, and 8000 refrigerated containers to carry the 2015 Zespri harvest to 54 countries.

"The New Zealand industry continues along the Psa recovery pathway, transitioning from the previous gold variety Hort16A to Gold3 with 4593 licensed hectares in NZ. With total volumes of premium Gold kiwifruit expected to reach pre-Psa levels this season and orchard values back to pre-Psa prices, our industry is good heart," says Jager.

"While the impact of Psa is still being felt across the kiwifruit industry, this remarkable turnaround is testament to the cooperative and pragmatic nature of the industry and the strong support we have received from Government."