Kiwifruitz sends its skins to a South Island firm for further processing in which polyphenols and other antioxidants are extracted. "They are taking out all the goodies from the skin," said Mr Jeffrey.
He arrived back home earlier this month from his latest overseas sales trip - a day before the Tauranga Westpac Business Awards announcement - after securing a new order from a large Russian food manufacturer with sites in France and Italy.
Kiwifruitz will send several tonnes of clean, dried kiwifruit seeds to the Russian company in January, following its first shipment early this year. The seeds are used in dairy products such as yoghurt.
"They got hold of us through our website and I'm confident we can sustain the orders - during the past eight years most of our exports have been driven through the internet," Mr Jeffrey said.
His confidence soared when Kiwifruitz, operating at the recently-opened Newnham Park Horticulture Innovation Centre, was named runner-up in the supreme Tauranga Business of the Year award, after being a finalist in five categories. It also won the Innovation/Entrepreneurship and Food Manufacturing awards.
"On the night of the awards, we confirmed an urgent order from Thailand and all our customers and suppliers were notified of our success within 72 hours," Mr Jeffrey said.
"All this helps and I'm pretty bullish about sales next year. We have a full order book, a new developing market in Japan and we want to make inroads into United States."
After increasing turnover 100 per cent in the past two years, Kiwifruitz wants to mainly consolidate over the next 12 months and look after its existing customers.
"We are in a price-sensitive market and we have to stay competitive," Mr Jeffrey said. "It's expensive to operate an exporting company in New Zealand compared with China and South America, and we are more expensive because of our distance to markets."
He looks after the sales and marketing, his wife, Kathryn, is the production and quality manager and his brother, Craig, looks after the supply chain. They are part of a full-time team of six and the staff increases to 14 during the peak production time from May through to the end of November.
Kiwifruitz handles hundreds of tonnes of soft processed-grade kiwifruit each year - taking the bulk of the fruit in the Western Bay deemed unsuitable for export.
The fruit goes through a purpose-built production line of pulping, pressing and refining machines, and a vat for settling the puree. The skins are taken off first, and the pulp and seeds drop down for further processing.
Each kiwifruit has up to 1000 seeds and their nutritious oil is sought after by food-processing companies.
The puree is blast frozen - it will last up to three years - and packed into 20kg cartons. The puree is sent to food and beverage manufacturers in countries such as Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, United States, Britain, Germany, Italy and Australia as an ingredient for fruit juices, smoothies, yoghurt, icecream and deserts.
The puree is also used for salad dressings, jam and baking products. "When the puree is used in a Starbucks Smoothie or Marks and Spencer and Sainsbury fruit juice, and the seeds go into the cookies served on Air New Zealand, we kick that home in our marketing," Mr Jeffrey said.
"Our passion of finding a use for the whole kiwifruit certainly helps to sell our products. We are even looking at a small-scale biogas/power operation for any of our waste byproduct we can't find a home for."
Mr Jeffrey believes his company will continue to receive the same amount of processed kiwifruit despite the impact of the Psa disease and a reduction in the national crop, but he knows they have to work more closely with suppliers.
"Everybody worries about the kiwifruit industry but, if everyone works together, I'm sure we will find a solution for Psa," he said.
