File image. Photo: Supplied
Fruit growers across the central North Island are counting their losses after a heavy frost decimated crops.
Strawberry Fields grows fruit across 22 acres in Matangi on the outskirts of Hamilton.
Owner Darien McFadden said a minus four frost late last week nailed about 20 percent of his crop.
"It's the most severe frost I've seen for that time of the year in 35 years," McFadden said.
"The severity combined with the time of the year has nailed 100 percent of the flowers and all the fruit that's sitting there. It's literally frozen the fruit on the bushes, so this morning the crews are out pulling everything off.
"Now [we're] behind 10 days while the new fruit grows."
McFadden estimated about 20 percent of his crop would die from the frost, which would result in a big financial hit on the business.
"One of the problems is that the early season fruit is the high value fruit," he said.
"At the moment strawberries are selling for $6 to $6.50 at the supermarket. So we've kind of missed the cream before we've even started."
Seeka is the country's largest kiwifruit grower. Its chief executive Michael Franks said the hard frost did not come at the best time for vines.
"The damage we've seen from the frost has come though ... Katikati, Te Puna, Tauranga, Te Puke, out to Edgecumbe and actually in Ōpōtiki as well, so right through the Bay of Plenty growing region.
"We were fortunate we had warning, so we had done assessments and brought helicopters in for orchards that didn't have frost protection."
Franks said it would be a while before the full extent of the damage was known.
"It varies from area to area. The vines effectively have woken up from the winter senescence [development stage] - so they're in leaf and they've got buds and so they know they've got leaves that [are] maybe two or three inches long or just coming out, and they've got their flower buds - so the frost effectively burns the leaves off and may make the flower buds unviable."
"We are out doing assessments now to see how much of an impact this will have.
"It's tough for growers because they've just come off a hard season with Covid, weather, labour issues, difficult market returns and quality issues, and of course they've spent all their money pruning their orchards and getting them tied down, which is a major investment, and now some have effectively lost it"
As RNZ reported last week, a Cambridge asparagus grower had to mow down 160 hectares of the vegetable due to the frost.