Māori kiwifruit growers launch export venture in first Zespri-Māori offshore collaboration

Maori Kiwifruit Growers Incorporated chair Anaru Timutimu at the Otama Marere Trust orchard in the Bay of Plenty. Photo / Andrew Warner

The country’s biggest group of Māori kiwifruit growers is to start exporting fruit to Hawaii this year with Taiwan next in its sights in a first for Zespri-Māori collaboration.

Māori Kiwifruit Growers Incorporated (MKGI), whose 40-plus members contribute around 10 per cent of New Zealand’s annual kiwifruit export volumes, has signed a collaborative marketing partnership with industry-dominant exporter Zespri, to send Zespri-branded kiwifruit to Hawaii from May.

Global marketer Zespri, which has the statutory right to export all New Zealand kiwifruit, except to Australia, said the new partnership was its first with Māori growers.

MKGI chair Anaru Timutimu said the organisation supported the “single desk” exporter structure - “it’s been great for Māori landowners and Māori communities” - but Māori growers had been keen to export for several years.

“The history and genealogical links - that’s the exciting part.”

MKGI was eyeing Taiwan next, Timutimu said. Māori have common ancestry with indigenous Hawaiian and Taiwanese people.

MKGI, whose members are a mix of Māori land trusts and Māori incorporations, would export around 80,000 trays or 13 containers of fruit this year, he said.

Zespri’s chief grower, industry and sustainability officer Carol Ward said the Hawaiian market was relatively underdeveloped, with sales of around 80,000 trays of green and SunGold fruit a year.

Under the MKGI programme, which Ward said was a pilot, MKGI would supply kiwifruit directly to Zespri’s distribution partner Fresh Aloha Direct.

Timutimu said MKGI planned a cultural links marketing programme for its new venture, but not until next year.

“We’ll base it around an arts festival held in Hawaii next year about June. We’ll build our campaign towards that.

“We probably see ourselves developing a marketing campaign that can be used around the world. It will be event-orientated. We’re not competing against Zespri, rather complementing it.”

Otama Marere orchard manager Homman Tapsell. The Seeka-supplying orchard is part of the new Māori Kiwifruit Growers Inc export venture to Hawaii. Photo / Andrew Warner

Asked if there was scope in the collaborative arrangement to make a financial premium for Māori growers, Timutimu said MKGI would make its return through the exporting, not fruit growing, side of the initiative.

“To a certain extent we’re setting it up as a separate export business. We’re still trying to figure out how we share in that opportunity. Initially we will be drawing the fruit from the general [Zespri supply] pool, the fruit won’t necessarily be Māori-grown. But in time we plan for the provenance to be end-to-end.”

The challenge with the Hawaii market was that consumers were attuned to smaller kiwifruit than Māori orchards produced.

“So we’ll initially source from the general pool and then hope to grow the market and change the [fruit size] profile, so consumers want bigger fruit. Māori growers don’t grow to that smaller fruit profile at the moment. Our goal is to sell more volume of bigger fruit.”

Timutimu said MKGI growers were “realistic”. “We are essentially a startup. We want to build our knowledge of exporting and logistics and marketing.”

Around 85 per cent of MKGI member orchards were in the Bay of Plenty, with the balance in Gisborne, Hawke’s Bay, the top of the South Island and Northland, he said.

The venture would help MKGI achieve a wider view of the kiwifruit supply chain than it currently had.

MKGI was formed in 2016 at the urging of Māori elders who wanted to develop Māori land and create a voice for Māori in the industry.

Ward said the company was involved in around 23 collaborative marketing programmes with 15 other companies to export New Zealand-grown fruit to a range of global markets.

The collaborative marketing process was overseen by industry regulator Kiwifruit New Zealand to provide grower choice of exporter and incentivise innovation, she said. It also helped develop new markets while allowing Zespri to focus on export activities that delivered the strongest returns for growers.

The MKGI programme would be reviewed by the regulator annually to consider whether the programme helped to increase the overall wealth of New Zealand kiwifruit producers.

Zespri created the role of head of Māori alliances this year.