Record Kiwifruit Harvest Brings Optimism, but Green Growers Face Profitability Challenges
Signs for the 2026-27 kiwifruit crop look good, but there are still some challenges for growers – especially those who produce green kiwifruit.
Seeka Kiwifruit has handled record volumes in the packing season, with more than 30 million trays handled in New Zealand for the first time.
This compares to about 26,400 million last year.
It has now completed kiwifruit packing operations in Australia and New Zealand for the 2016 season.
Seeka now heads into the storage and inventory management portion of the season in New Zealand, while at the same time it completes its kiwifruit sales program in Australia. The Australian pear selling season is anticipated to complete in October.
New Zealand volumes handled by Seeka were up by 16.6% at 30.8 million trays. This figure includes approximately 700k trays that will be removed from the inventory or at time of packing, through crop management. All volumes have been handled within the company's infrastructure, and Seeka now moves to managing more than 16 million trays in store.
Australian kiwifruit volumes at 580k trays were behind expectation by about 109k trays, but have sold well in the market. Nashi pears are continuing to be packed out and the selling program expected to be completed in October.
The company is expected to report on its first six months earnings and provide commentary on trading on or around August 25, 2016.
Oamaru-based livestock handling specialist Te Pari has bought Combi Clamp, the New Zealand manufacturer of Combi Clamp manual sheep handlers.
Agriculture Minister Todd McClay has admitted that a scheme bringing workers from Pacific nations to work on orchards has become too hard to navigate but says changes are coming.
A new app designed in New Zealand aims to help sheep, beef and deer farmers capture, analyse and use body condition score data more effectively.
Canterbury farmer Andy Macfarlane has been appointed to the board of AgriZeroNZ, the public-private partnership designed to accelerate the development and deployment of emissions reduction tools for New Zealand farmers.
For over 50 years Mel Ewers has been supporting the apple sector navigate through compliance and quality assurance issues.
The apple sector is enjoying a bumper harvest season.

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