Good news for kiwifruit industry

Post-harvest operator reports a 34 per cent profit boost Seeka Kiwifruit Industries' staff and grower/shareholders were smiling yesterday after the country's biggest post-harvest operator reported a 34 per cent increase in net profit to $11 million for the first six months of its latest financial year.
"Our operational performance has ensured that supplying [kiwifruit] growers received very competitive returns and our reputation continues to bring new growers and volume to Seeka," said its chief executive, Michael Franks.
Te Puke-based Seeka increased its revenue by 15.6 per cent to $110.4 million for the six months ending September 30.
Its gross profit was $20 million, up 60 per cent, and Seeka still lifted its net profit after having to make a tax adjustment of $3.2 million because of the change in deducting depreciation on buildings with a life longer than 50 years.
Because of the nature of the kiwifruit industry, Seeka makes most of its money through fruit sales in the first six months and the second half is more concerned with maintaining fixed costs and managing orchard work.
Seeka is predicting annual profit of between $9.5-$10.5 million to March 31, 2011, up from $7.5 million in the previous year. But Seeka is changing its balance date to December 31 and the profit would likely be in the region of $11.5-$12.5 million.
Mr Franks attributed the improvement in the first half financial performance to the integration of the Huka Pak operation in Totara St - Seeka bought the processing and packing operation in December last year.
Huka Pak added 25 per cent more volume for Seeka and was able to pack more gold kiwifruit early in the selling season.
This season Seeka, which has a market share of 24 per cent, handled 22.6 million trays of kiwifruit including more than 5 million trays of the gold variety.
Mr Franks said two of Seeka's long term leased orchards had symptoms of Pseudomonas syringae pv actinidiae (Psa) but he believed the infection was light because of the early detection and containment strategy.
Those two orchards make up 7.4ha of the 130 ha Seeka leases on a long term basis.
Seventeen of Seeka's supplying orchards had tested positive for Psa - 11 were gold orchards and six grew green kiwifruit. Mr Franks said at this stage those orchards have some leaves that are spotted and the disease does not appear to be getting worse.
"There's no sign that the Psa is spreading and I'm reasonably confident about the next harvest. With proper containment and spraying programme, we could clean this up," he said.
Mr Franks said the vines with light infection still have good crop loads - they seem to be healthy and growing well.
"We would have had a bumper crop if it wasn't for the Psa. The pollination period was fantastic - it was warm, the bees worked hard and the flowers were abundantly pollinated. The fruit set in gold looks tremendous," he said.
From the total annual production of 23-25 million trays of gold kiwifruit, a seasonal fluctuation - for any reason - can be 5 per cent, Mr Franks said. And it's likely the Psa outbreak could claim less than 5 per cent.
"I'm certainly more relaxed about the situation now than I was because the disease doesn't appear to be spreading, though it can still be a potentially serious problem," he said.
As at yesterday, 68 orchards around the country had Psa detections, 30 of them being gold, 21 green and the other 17 a combination of both.
The Te Puke area had 52 infected orchards, Tauranga two.