Angry kiwifruit growers to sue Zespri

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON

Dozens of kiwifruit growers plan to sue Zespri over the monopoly marketer's abrupt axing of lucrative contracts for their early-to-market fruit variety.

About 65 Auckland and Bay of Plenty growers of Tomua kiwifruit - a variety developed to head off Chilean fruit in the Northern Hemisphere market - will petition the High Court for an inquiry into the damages they suffered after Zespri cancelled agreements that were to run until 2007.

Auckland accountant Terry Harris, a spokesman for the Tomua Action Group, said the growers' losses, including the 50 per cent premium Zespri promised for the fruit, could reach $20 million.

Zespri had offered compensation but it fell well short of the growers' needs, and the company had refused mediation, he said.

Papakura Tomua grower Len Lipscombe said he was shocked to learn in June that Zespri did not want the fruit he had been encouraged to grow since 1995 by a 50 per cent premium on production until 2007.

"We had the whole orchard weed-sprayed, pruned, tied down, and we were ready to go for only our fourth holiday in 30 years when we got the word they didn't want it any more."

Mr Lipscombe, who has been a kiwifruit grower for 17 years, said he had been hugely disadvantaged by the changeover to Tomua.

Zespri's compensation package covered only 50 per cent of growers' losses, and did not take into account expected profits, he said.

The grower spokesman for the action group said many of the approximately 150 Tomua producers had committed money to a fighting fund at a recent Tauranga meeting.

"We've lost all those [years of] crops because we cut off a perfectly healthy vine that was producing [and] grafted the new variety on. It's just started to come into production, and we've got to cut it all off again and suffer a loss until the next variety comes into production. We won't be in fulltime production again until 2002-03."

Mr Lipscombe said he wanted to be "no worse off in 2002 and 2003 had I never cut the things off and got myself involved in the whole horrible experiment."

Zespri spokeswoman Susan Robinson-Derus said the board was considering its position on mediation.

A compensation package negotiated with some orchardists had been presented in contracts to all Tomua growers in recent days and some acceptances "were starting to dribble in."

Zespri had pulled Tomua from its marketing programme after customers rejected it, she said.

"It was supposed to be an early-season green kiwifruit to pave the way for the bulk of the Zespri green crop but it didn't do that ... It just didn't perform this year; so you don't allow your premier brand positioning to be in any way dented by a product that customers view as inferior. You make a decision to cut your losses and not threaten the viability of the rest of the programme."

Ms Robinson-Derus could make no comment on why Zespri signed agreements with Tomua growers until 2007.

She said the industry's Kiwi Start programme - the use of selected early-maturing orchards of the main harvest variety, Hayward - had also played a big role in replacing Tomua.

"But that was because Tomua did not perform as an early-season fruit."

Mr Lipscombe said the New Start programme coincided with the commercialisation of Tomua and helped to make it redundant.