'Volumes are a little bit down on what we expected, not because of market share reasons, but because the New Zealand crop in total has been disappointing,' said Robertson. 'The total crop could be as low as 14 million cartons, but because of deregulation, there is no longer a single voice. Cox has been hit climatically, but Enza must be pretty pleased globally with its offer: we tucked away programmes of fruit for our customers a year ago.' Meanwhile, Capespan has spoken out following trade criticism about pricing of its Cape-branded New Zealand apple offer. The company's Martin Dunnett has scotched rumours that the one-time South African monopoly operator has been drastically undercutting Enza in its first season in a deregulated market.

'We knew this season that we would only be small players in New Zealand fruit,' said Dunnett. 'On Royal Gala there was a difficult end of season for Brazilian fruit... but we make premiums on Cape over the prevailing market price, and as we are only small players out of New Zealand, we are not selling huge volumes anyway.' Some traders had reported Cape-branded fruit selling at 300p a carton below Enza levels in early May. l

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