Night picking combats rain-plagued kiwifruit season

By Anna Bowden
The kiwifruit industry has suffered its wettest and harshest season in 28 years, according to Chris Dunstan, a gold kiwifruit grower who has more than 40ha of fruit to pick.
The foul weather has prompted those in the industry to get innovative - and for Mr Dunstan's Pyes Pa Southern Cross Horticulture workers that has meant picking at night and even trialling the use of helicopters at dawn to dry off orchards.
Other growers in Katikati and Te Puke agreed this year has been a battle. The difficult weather has meant some businesses have struggled to retain picking staff who are swapping jobs to get work.
Mr Dunstan said with 18 permanent staff and a $1 million annual labour budget he has a large pool of staff - his troubles come with the rain.
"In the 28 years I've been involved in growing kiwifruit, I cannot remember a harvest season that has been anywhere near as wet or inclement as this one," he said. People are looking for more innovative ways of getting more picking time. We've been using these generator sets with florescent lights for night picking."
It is the third season Southern Cross has used the system, among other strategies.
"We've been trialling some work on sometimes drying fruit using a helicopter earlier in the day, we've been doing that a couple of times this week. We blow the bulk of the rain or dew off just on sunrise, we find that the fruit dries much quicker and we can get two to three extra hours' picking. This is especially useful on days with slow drying conditions," Mr Dunstan said.
Packhouse operators in Katikati and Te Puke are also cursing this as the kiwifruit season from hell as the rain hits orchard access, picking, packing and staff retention.
Te Puke's Seeka group marketing manager Val Faulkner says weather had been a big issue for growers this year because there had not been many consecutive fine days to give fruit a break from rain.
"There has definitely been weather issues that have effected everybody," she said.
Katikati's Birchwood Packhouse manager Bert van Heuckelum has been keeping rain records at his Lindemann Rd home since 1993 and says that this is the second-wettest year since his records began. "Pickers are concerned because a lot of (the packers) are backpackers and paying for accommodation ... It seems packers are prepared to swap packhouses to find work - that upsets the whole balance and then everybody's chasing people."
Aongatete Coolstores' Allan Dawson estimates about 45 per cent of the crop is still to be picked. But fruit ripening, as well as access, have become issues after last week's continual rain. "The fortunate ones will have put aside fruit in bulk storage and can jump into that but others are grinding to a halt and will have to stop unless they retrieve fruit from controlled atmosphere stores.
" I can't remember a previous season being quite as wet. Where you could use tractors before, now you need four-wheel-drive tractors. Trucks can't get into loading areas any more because of the mud and people are loading on the road side."
Bridgecool site manager Marty Grey said the business has been trying to manage the situation and had picked a lot of fruit when the weather was fine.
Sean Carnachan, Western's Orchard manager, says the long-range forecast for this coming week looks quite stable.