Good summer and settled markets result in top season for Bay fruit growers

Hawke's Bay fruit growers have enjoyed on of the best seasons ever. Photo/File

This year's Hawke's Bay fruit season is one of the best ever.

A hot, dry early summer combined with mature, settled markets prepared to pay a premium for New Zealand's fruit means fruit growers are still smiling.

Growers are showing that confidence by continuing to plant apple trees to the point where tree nurseries can no longer keep up with the demand.

A decade ago fruit growing in Hawke's Bay seemed to be on a downward spiral with hectares of trees pulled out as the returns from highly competitive export markets kept prices down and a shortage of labour made harvest difficult.

Now, with the advent of new varieties of apples, the labour shortage eased by RSE workers from the Pacific Islands and good markets in 80 countries around the world, the outlook is a lot brighter.

Hawke's Bay Fruit growers' Association president Lesley Wilson said the industry had "got its act together in the last five years".

"Now we have good business models and a robust industry."

She said this season had started with good colour, crunch and sweetness before the weather threw them a few challenges.

"But we managed to get most the crop in between cyclones."

The chief executive of Pipfruit New Zealand, Alan Pollard, said volumes this year were down on forecast, something he put down to an over-optimistic forecast rather than a problem with the crop.

He said New Zealand held the exclusive rights to new varieties such as Rockit and Dazzle and tweaks to familiar varieties which gave New Zealand an advantage in world markets. The new apples were well received in the markets.

At present Asia, particularly Taiwan, took 41 per cent of the export crop.

"That is likely to reach 50 per cent."

Thailand, China and India were all important and growing markets, he said.

They preferred sweet, red varieties whereas Germany, still our biggest single market, preferred jazz, royal gala and the more-tart braeburn.

For stonefruit growers the news was just as good.

Stonefruit sector chairman Brian Fulford the season was one of the better ones.

Most growers now have irrigation so the hot dry summer was not a problem and growers could water when they needed to.

Their crop was in before the heavy rain of February arrived so the quality of the crop was good.

The wet autumn has delayed the kiwifruit picking season and is likely to reduce the export crop.

Sector chairman Richard Pentreath said the high rainfall and lower sunshine hours would reduce the all-important dry matter in the fruit.

This was likely to hit the premium export crop rather than production overall.
The gold crop was almost in but the green crop was a week away from completion, he said.

Labour had not been a problem with most of the crop picked by locals or backpackers.
Hawke's Bay has about 182ha of kiwifruit orchards. There are 47ha in the green variety and 135ha in gold.

These plantings produce 1.4-million trays of gold and 390,000 trays of green kiwifruit.