Almost 30 years after Fresh Carriers started carrying New Zealand kiwifruit to Japan, the shipping company’s president Takao Takeshige continues to marvel at the sustained expansion of the trade.
“This success and the continuing growth is thanks to the great efforts of all the people working in the kiwifruit industry,” Takeshige explained.
To celebrate the service of leaders within the industry, Fresh Carriers will again act as the naming-rights of the Hayward Medal for 2015. Over the past three years, the medal has been awarded to people who made outstanding contributions to the kiwifruit industry in very different ways, through science, leadership and personal vision and drive.
The medal’s honour roll includes growers Paul Heywood and Leo Mangos, who were last year jointly recognised for their work in establishing the industry’s grower-owned structure. The ex-chair of the New Zealand Kiwifruit Marketing Board, John Palmer, was awarded the medal in 2013 for his efforts to bring the kiwifruit industry through the fiscal crisis in the early 1990s, while the inaugural award went to Plant & Food Research plant breeder, Russell Lowe, for developing the gold kiwifruit variety Hort16A.
Nominations for the 2015 medal are now open and will close on Friday 18 September. The winner will be announced at the Hayward Medal dinner, which follows the Kiwifruit Industry Symposium on Thursday 29 October.
“Our industry is set for strong growth and on track to double export revenue by 2020,” said Paul Jones, chairman of New Zealand’s kiwifruit Industry Advisory Council. “We simply wouldn’t be in this position today without world-class people and the Fresh Carriers Hayward Medal has been set up to acknowledge and celebrate our great people.
“We’re once again calling on our colleagues to nominate the people they think have made a defining contribution to the industry success we see today.”
