Prime Minister Bill English is in Te Puke this afternoon.
He first visited Te Puke High School where he was welcomed with a powhiri from students and mihi from kaumatua Tapua Te Amo and kuia Vervies Punohu McCausland before meeting some of the school's international students and student leaders.
International student Yolanda Xu, 14, from Chins said her high school in China is so large she has never even met the principal, never mind the country's leader.
''This is great and exciting,'' she said.
Lyn Hartje, 15, from Germany said the visit had prompted a lot of discussion at her home stay, especially after former Prime Minister John Key's valedictory speech yesterday.
The Prime Minister's second assignation for the afternoon is the opening of New Zealand's largest automated kiwifruit grading and sorting line at EastPack's Washer Rd site in the town.
The new 14 lane Compac grader is the first fruit sorter in the industry which is larger than 10 lanes. It packs 100,000 trays per shift and provides EastPack with capacity to pack in excess of 40 million trays of fruit across the business.
To handle the volume of fruit the grader utilises a dual bin tip and infeed setup and is effectively two graders joined together.
The grader utilises the latest generation of automatic box fillers which further lowers packing costs.