New Zealand’s largest top-fruit grower and marketer Turners & Growers is optimistic that it will increase profits this year.
T&G’s chairman Tony Gibbs told 140 shareholders in Auckland that he expects profits for 2007 to beat the $16.97 million (£6.56m) reported last year.
But Gibbs voiced concern at the numbers of growers leaving the business at Friday’s agm. "The logical growth area for the group is offshore and this is where we will see an increasing amount of focus in the future," Gibbs said, pointing to rising plantings of the company’s Jazz brand apples overseas as an example.
The company is performing better at this point in its financial year, although the export volume has fallen. T&G’s subsidiary Enza, however, has handled the same percentage of the crop.
"Succession planning remains an issue, with the younger generation not coming on to the orchards and the high costs of property in the main apple-growing regions of Nelson and Hawke's Bay are an impediment," he said.
Gibbs said New Zealand would feature more "corporate" orchards in future, and that growers must be prepared ito nvest in new varieties and growing techniques.
T&G has never been backward in this respect and Enza now has the rights to its own varieties of green, gold and red kiwifruit, said Gibbs, mainly to be grown and marketed offshore.
