Zespri launched what is shaping up as a record New Zealand kiwifruit export season over the weekend. The first charter shipments of Zespri-branded gold kiwifruit departed the Port of Tauranga on Sunday, bound for Zespri’s long-standing premium market of Japan.
Zespri’s chief executive Lain Jager said the New Zealand industry was forecasting a harvest of around 30m trays of gold kiwifruit this season – 25m of which will be Gold3 (marketed as Zespri SunGold) – surpassing the previous record of 29m trays sold in 2011, prior to the outbreak of the Psa vine killing disease.
“The industry continues along the Psa recovery pathway, transitioning from the previous gold variety Hort16A to Gold3 with 4,593ha licensed across the country,” Jager explained. “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.”
Zespri has chartered 55 refrigerated ships for the 2015 season, including five ships direct to Shanghai. An additional 8,000 refrigerated containers will carry the remainder of the 2015 crop to 54 countries around the world.
This number is expected to grow considerably over thecoming seasons with Zespri on track to sell more than 50m trays of Gold3 in 2018. To cope with the added volume, the single-desk marketer is working hard to ramp-up sales in new and existing markets.
“Our in-market teams are focused on building the demand for Gold3, introducing customers and consumers around the world to this great-tasting new Zespri product,” Jager said.
Zespri sees no reason why long-standing markets such as Japan and Europe will not have the capacity to absorb additional volumes of Gold3 over the coming seasons. The first European bound ship is due to depart Tauranga in early April.
New markets in rapidly developing economies such as China, the Middle East and Brazil are also being targeted. Zespri sales in China have grown at about 30 per cent per annum over the last decade and are forecast to continue at around 20 percent per annum until 2020. China expected to be Zespri’s number one market by volume by the end of the decade.
