Growth of 3.9 per cent is forecast across all varieties, with a focus on selling more fruit earlier in the season
Zespri Europe has reported that the first vessels of the 2025/26 New Zealand kiwifruit season are en route to the ports of Zeebrugge, Tarragona, and Vado and expected to arrive in mid-April.
With the harvest now underway, the marketer said it expects a crop of 205mn trays, representing a moderate increase over last season. Growing conditions have been largely positive for most growers, with good sunshine hours and regular rainfall creating ideal conditions for fruit sizing and taste.
Following last year’s record-breaking New Zealand season, the EU region is set for another good year in 2025, with forecast growth of 3.9 per cent across all varieties and a focus on selling more fruit earlier in the season.
Nikki Johnson, acting general manager Europe, commented: “The SunGold season is expected to start a week earlier, with the first arrival of New Zealand SunGold kiwifruit currently planned for mid-April, and the first green shipments arriving in early May.
“The Zespri EU team has clear plans and strong partnerships across the European markets to sell our 2025 crop, with a continued focus on returning strong value to our growers, customers, and consumers.
“We have continued to see strong demand in recent months for fruit grown in Europe, putting us in a strong position as we begin to transition to our New Zealand-grown fruit over the coming weeks.
“Our sales and marketing teams in market have been working closely with our partners to ensure another year of strong marketing campaigns, many featuring our iconic KiwiBrothers, and we look forward to rolling these out across the months ahead.”
For the second year, the KiwiBrothers will feature in Zespri’s ‘Choose Healthy, Choose Real – Zespri Zing’ campaign in Europe, designed to inspire consumers to rethink their daily eating habits and encourage them to make eating “real” food a sustainable habit.
In addition to traditional channels such as TV, radio, and digital advertising, the Zespri team is experimenting with gamification to bring the Zespri Zing campaign to life, as well as setting up impactful brand experiences in several markets.
A significant focus remains on in-store activation throughout the season, with most purchase decisions for kiwifruit in Europe still made at the point of purchase. This has been a particular focus through Zespri’s Perfect Store Project in several European countries, designed to enhance its in-store visibility, ensuring shoppers can easily find Zespri products and its different varieties.
This season, Zespri will also continue its transition to fully-certified home compostable fruit labels. The label, developed with partner Sinclair, received globally recognised home compostable certification from three of the leading certification bodies towards the end of 2024 after a number of years of development and trials.
Johnson commented: “We’re really excited to be transitioning to fully certified home compostable fruit labels this year. Our Zespri fruit label provides an important assurance to our consumers the fruit they are purchasing is authentic, safe and high-quality Zespri kiwifruit. Our customers are also happy to see the move to fully compostable labels, particularly in Europe where it is mandated in some countries, such as France and Belgium.
“We’re looking forward to getting our New Zealand season underway in Europe and working closely with our partners to meet the strong demand we’re seeing for Zespri Kiwifruit.”
