Zespri Breaks Records with $5.9 Billion in Global Kiwifruit Sales
Zespri's sales of kiwifruit for the 2025 season have broken all past records.
While the name and technology remain unchanged and new machines will continue to carry the Novag name, all the assets, intellectual property and staff of the French manufacturer have been acquired by a new organisation called Agriculture Nouvelle Génération.
The move secures the future of the French no-till specialist, having called in the administrators in October 2024. The new consortium is led by a long-time Novag customer and farmer, Jean Paul Rault.
“Our objective is to invest in the future of the brand, preserve its unique know-how, safeguard jobs, alongside ensuring continuity of service for users, while leading the company towards solid and sustainable development,” says Rault.
All warranties and commitments for the existing global machine fleet will be honoured, ensuring a continuous after-sales service for all Novag customers, while the entire team in France and at Novag GmbH in Germany remains operational.
Founded in 2011 as a start-up, Novag now sells its machines in more than 25 countries inside and outside Europe, with Ashburton head-quartered Carrfields Machinery importing and distributing the brand in New Zealand.
The company develops and produces its direct seeding units at its main site in Fressines, western France, and established its first subsidiary, Novag GmbH, in Hannover, Germany in 2022. The company makes a product range of no-till machines in working widths of up to 10m.
New Zealand dairy farmers are set to be the first in the world to receive access to a new digital physical milk pricing tool that enables them to fix the price for their physical milk.
State farmer Pāmu is opening its farm gates this summer in an effort to give the rural sector the opportunity to see how large-scale, multi-system farming is delivering productivity and profitability across New Zealand.
A five-year study has found that the cost of reducing emissions without technology may be significant and unsustainable for Northland dairy farmers.
DairyNZ says Waikato farmers need certainty on Plan Change 1, but they say that certainty must be matched with practical, workable rules and a clear transition that doesn't get ahead of the new resource management system currently under review.
While the Government has moved quickly to make commercial hauliers' lot easier during the current fuel crisis, they appear to be stuck in the creep box when it comes to the agricultural industry.
Waikato farmers have been told that the Government’s new planning system legislation and the region’s Plan Change 1 (PC1) “won’t mesh together very well”.

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