Zespri sent 177 million trays of New Zealand fruit offshore in the 2022 season. Photo: RNZ / Susan Murray
The kiwifruit crop, which is New Zealand's biggest horticultural export, could be down by 20 percent this season.
Zespri is a $4 billion global exporting business. It sent 177 million trays of New Zealand fruit offshore in the 2022 season, but the two largest packhouse entities are predicting big drops in the volume of fruit they will handle this season.
Seeka chief executive Michael Franks said a late spring frost toasted many orchards, spring was wet so bud-break and pollination was poor, and now there has been flooding.
He said their post-harvest facilities could handle 52 million trays in a season, but they were expecting 40m trays or fewer will be picked this season.
Post-harvest operator Eastpack is also predicting a 20 percent drop in fruit volume - planning for 40m trays of throughput.
Chief executive Hamish Simpson said it meant some packing lines might be mothballed for the season, but it was just a one-year blip.
"Knowing that in 2024 just getting back to average yields will probably increase our volume off this year by 30 percent. And this is horticulture and every now and then you have these challenging events, but if you look back over the past 10 years this is very much an outlier," he said.
Simpson said the red kiwifruit harvest was underway and the first gold was picked on Tuesday.
Both post-harvest operators said labour woes of the past few seasons have eased with overseas backpackers, RSE workers and New Zealanders signing up for jobs.
The sector needs 24,000 workers to pick and pack fruit during the season which runs from March until the end of May.
Seeka is assuring overseas customers no fruit affected by last month's floods in Hawke's Bay, Gisborne and Bay of Plenty will be picked.
The industry estimated around 72 percent of vines in Hawke's Bay and 25 percent in Gisborne have suffered moderate-to-significant damage, while some orchards in Bay of Plenty were a write-off.
There are food safety concerns around fruit affected by floodwater.
Franks said he expected about half a million trays would not be picked in Hawke's Bay and Gisborne.
"The protocol is if fruit is contaminated by ground water, so the water's come up to the extent that the fruit is wet by it, saturated by it, impacted by it, then it can't be put into the food supply chain and neither it should be, so we are going through making sure that the fruit we are handling is safe," he said.
Seeka said in a normal season about 5 percent of its production comes from Hawke's Bay and Gisborne.