Kiwifruit sector fronts up to fruit quality issues that risked its export good name this year

The kiwifuit industry is pulling out all stops for a brighter 2023 season. Photo / Supplied

Changes are coming in the orchards, packhouses and offices of the $3 billion kiwifruit industry as it unites to avoid a repeat of export fruit quality issues that undermined the Zespri brand this season.

A update from the dominant marketer said the industry was working through the details of a tactical quality action plan to make "important adjustments" for the 2023 season.

A great deal of the quality issues of the past two seasons have been created by a severe labour shortage in orchards at picking time and in post-harvest packhouses, due to Covid restrictions and absenteeism.

Zespri chief executive Dan Mathieson told the Herald the industry has been around 6000 workers short during the season.

He said while the outlook for the 2023 season was brighter, with the Government creating an additional 3000 places in the recognised seasonal employer scheme (RSE) which allows the horticulture and viticulture industries to recruit overseas and seasonal labour when necessary, "strong signs" of the return of working holiday visa holders and hopefully, an easing of the pandemic, the industry recognised it needed to make changes for the 2023 season.

Overseas visitors on working holidays made up around 25 per cent of the industry's traditional workforce pre-Covid.

The Zespri update said the action plan was likely to consider changes to the commercial drivers that incentivised better quality fruit, in particular rebalancing the incentive structure between early and late-season fruit. This would help ensure "we get the right fruit at the right time to the right place", it said.

Mathieson explained this meant reviewing incentives to bring fruit to market early versus the amount of money offered to ensure a supply of good storing fruit at the end of the season.

He said other areas of focus included how fruit was harvested off the vine, quality procedures in packhouses and quality auditing procedures in New Zealand in offshore markets.

Dan Mathieson, chief executive of kiwifruit marketer Zespri. Photo / Alan Gibson

"With the shortage of people there was a higher level of nicks and scuffs on the fruit. Hopefully with more people that will improve but we're looking at whether we can put in place better training.

"We're looking at the amount of fruit we take into the market as well. This year, as again we had fewer people, we had to take more fruit earlier into the market. We didn't have the capacity in New Zealand to keep managing it well so there was higher pressure offshore to quality check the fruit.

"You want to take just the appropriate amount of inventory to market so there's enough to meet demand but not too much sitting around in coolstores offshore.

"Clearly this year there's been a lot of pressure on our supply chain and a lot of fruit that would normally not make it through, got through to our markets. That's certainly something that needs to improve for next year.

"The good news is that when we have been able to get good quality fruit through, it's been flying off the shelves."

Zespri had sold into overseas markets 123 million trays or 74 per cent of the full-year crop and was now moving into the key post-summer fruit sales period.

Just under 81 million trays of class one SunGold fruit had been delivered, which was 81 per cent of the crop sold, compared to 82 per cent at the same time last year. Class one green fruit was 63 per cent sold with 38 million trays delivered, slightly behind the proportion sold last year with 5.5 million fewer available trays to sell. SunGold and green kiwifruit were 83 per cent and 54 per cent delivered compared to 75 per cent and 59 per cent respectively at this time last season.

Asked how much Zespri's reputation for consistently providing high quality fruit had been tainted by the quality problem, Mathieson said the company had managed to keep most of the affected fruit off retail shelves.

"But it was certainly not to our normal standards and we know that. The industry has stepped back and said what do we have to do to restore [the name]. We're doing a full review of the supply chain."

He said offshore distribution customers had been forewarned of possible quality issues.

"At the beginning of the season I was in-market and I let them know after a tough 2021 we expected another challenging year, primarily because we were so short of people. We discussed that with customers and they absolutely expect us to get things right in 2023."