Workers set to lose pay after thieves steal blueberries from orchard

Bay Blue owner Marian Hirst next to the stripped blueberry bushes in Hastings. Photo / Warren Buckland

By RNZ

Hundreds of kilograms of blueberries stolen from a Hawke’s Bay orchard will likely be sold at street markets across the country.

Workers at Bay Blueberries, just south of Hastings, arrived at work last week to find their berry bushes bare and thousands of dollars worth of produce stolen.

Owner Marian Hirst said the thieves would have needed vehicles, equipment, crates and some lights. She said at least a dozen people, from pickers to gate staff, would now not get paid.

Hawke’s Bay Grower’s Association president Brydon Nesbit said petty theft of fruit around harvesting season happened every year.

“People go in there and take bags of apples, some bags of fruit, maybe sweetcorn which still isn’t good - it’s stealing from growers. But it’s not common to have that amount of produce stolen all at once,” he said.

“It seems like a pretty organised outfit who’s gone in there. They’ve got a purpose to steal all that fruit and I imagine they have taken that to market.”

The stripped blueberry bushes at Bay Blue blueberry farm in Hastings. Photo / Warren Buckland

He said it was likely the blueberries have been dispersed around the country, mainly in the north.

“These grower markets or street markets where people sell produce. Those kinds of places.

“No one will know. The people selling them won’t know, the people buying them won’t know that they have been stolen. It’s really unfortunate.”

Nesbit said the loss of an entire season’s produce could put orchards in the region still recovering from Cyclone Gabrielle out of business.

“Many growers have gone through a huge amount of turmoil and have spent a lot of money to get their crops back up and running. Some growers have even pulled out because it’s been too much for them.

“For them to work so hard to spend so much money to get a crop and then to have it whipped out beneath them is absolutely devastating. My heart goes out to the company. It’s an appalling thing to have happen.”

Nesbit said it was not the first time a theft of this magnitude has taken place.

“There’s been growers of apples that have had trucks and forklifts come into their blocks at night. Organised groups picked 20 or 30 bins of fruit - containing 2000 to 2500 apples.

“They’ve picked all that fruit at night, under light, put it on trucks and stolen it. That has happened down here. It’s something they contend with all the time.”