Kiwifruit post-harvest operators to up capacity

DMS Kiwifruit Pack House, Te Puna. Photo / Joel Ford

Bay of Plenty company DMS is one of several post-harvest operators gearing up to boost capacity ahead of the anticipated additional volume of the G3 SunGold kiwifruit variety that has been replacing vines hit by Psa.

Post-harvest operators are expecting that next season about 70 per cent of production will be Hayward Green, and most of the balance SunGold, with SunGold continuing to make up a bigger percentage of the harvest in the following years.

Zespri estimates that industry-wide fruit production of SunGold will increase to more than 50 million trays in the next three years.

To address the growth, DMS planned to increase its coolstore facilities from a static capacity of about four million trays by almost 20 per cent.

The increased capacity would be ready when next year's harvest began in March.

The company would also increase packhouse operations to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"We're a medium-sized company," said director Craig Greenlees, a co-owner and co-founder of DMS with Paul Jones. "We don't plan to be the biggest, but we do try to be one of the best and we think we're achieving that. We're getting very good results for our growers in terms of quality."

Chief operating officer Derek Masters said DMS had always been a SunGold advocate in the post-Psa environment, championing it as the road to recovery when many lacked confidence to try something new.

"We are now seeing that recovery come to fruition, which is extremely exciting for the industry," he said. "We are well advanced in our planning to address the increase in fruit volumes over the next three seasons."

DMS says it has the best fruit-loss results amongst Bay of Plenty post-harvest operators, recording a 0.037 per cent onshore fruit loss on Zespri's 2014 scorecard for the G3 variety, compared to the industry average of 1.15 per cent, in 2014.