High-yielding Seeka to double blue bins

Seeka avocado manager Dr Jonathan Dixon says incentives to hold fruit till late in the season paid off for its growers.

Seeka will harvest all of next season's crop for its avocado growers using the new efficient blue plastic bins it has been introducing as part of its commitment to innovation, says chief executive Michael Franks.

Seeka has 6000 of the bins in service and will be doubling the number this year. The Surestore bins are stronger, safer to handle, easier to clean than wood and lighter, allowing more fruit to be loaded on to a truck. Mr Franks said they were less damaging to the fruit and had helped improve the quality of fruit.

Based on publicly reported returns from the leading exporters, Seeka has outperformed the industry on orchard gate return (OGR) in the past two seasons. Seeka's avocado growers have been paid out an average OGR of $16.64 per export tray for 2014-15, compared to $15-plus for its competitors.

"Seeka has secured the top avocado returns in the industry for two successive seasons by building a brand with a reputation for quality, which benefits all New Zealand growers," said Mr Franks.

SeekaFresh manager Annmarie Lee said Seeka's aim was to ensure sustainable and profitable OGR for its growers and support the New Zealand industry's growth.

"We are fully vertically integrated from orchard to market, which means we have excellent communication channels throughout the supply chain to ensure we manage our harvest to maximise pricing in the market," she said.

NZX-listed Seeka, a leading post-harvest company, has been diversifying its fresh produce base, and is now a significant avocado grower with managed and leased avocado orchards, and major packhouses in the Bay of Plenty and in Kerikeri.

The dominant player in the New Zealand industry is AVOCO, with a share estimated at more than 60 per cent of total production.

Seeka says a reason for its avocado success has been the strength of the SeekaFresh brand in Australia, the most important export market for avocados. Avocado manager Dr Jonathan Dixon said Seeka has focused on the Australian market for the 2014-15 season because of its established presence there, and because of concerns over delays in US west coast ports in late October/early November.

Seeka decided to slow harvesting and take advantage of potentially higher end of season prices in Australia.

"Our grower council representatives decided they would prefer to take a chance on the Australian market improving at the end of the season, and that proved to be the correct decision," said Dr Dixon.

"We were able to adopt that strategy because we have systems in place to consistently deliver the fruit in good shape, and because we put in place innovative incentive pricing for growers holding fruit till late in the season."

Avocado sales

* Avocado trees bear fruit irregularly so crop volumes vary each year. When high volumes are produced sales returns have historically decreased.

* Total sales this year were $135 million on a record total of 7 million trays, compared to $136 million achieved in the previous season on a total of 4.9 million trays.

* Export trays have increased to 4.7 million in 2014-15 from 3.1 million last season, with domestic consumption almost doubling, to 2.3 million trays.The 2014-15 data includes class 2 fruit exported for processing.