Golden days in the kiwifruit market

Kiwifruit sales were "going like a train" in Asia, Zespri chief executive Tony Marks told the annual meeting in Tauranga.

He told shareholders last week that the present sales season looked like being a rewarding year.

Zespri's marketers in Japan had already met 50 per cent of their target at strong prices and the European market was meeting records for an early start.

Taste was proving a key selling point and the new reality for growers was that higher brix levels (the amount of soluble sugars in the kiwifruit) meant higher prices.

Zespri gold kiwifruit was a key point of difference over rivals, including New Zealand's main southern hemisphere competitor, Chile.

"Watching it already sell over two million trays in Japan, witnessing the genuine repeat buyers in Taiwan, seeing it personally in a demo in a Korean supermarket where housewives clamoured to taste and buy it, noting the greatly increased European demand, I'm now utterly confident it's going to be a winner," said Marks, who will step down in December.

In many markets, the higher-priced gold fruit was outselling green fruit at a ratio of 3:1, and was constrained only by its relative novelty, he said.

But green kiwifruit sales remained on a par with this time last season.

Marks said Zespri relied on its vertical integration, intellectual property - such as its licence to market HortResearch's gold kiwifruit cultivar - the Zespri brand, its control on the export of kiwifruit outside Australasia, and its people.

Executive chairman Doug Voss told the meeting that Zespri's performance over the past four years positioned the industry well to refocus efforts on improving its integrated structure.





Zespri was continuing its push into year-round marketing and had an unrivalled advantage through controlling the worldwide marketing rights to its gold kiwifruit. It has established a company, Aragorn, to extend Zespri's portfolio with value-added processing.



In June, Zespri declared a maiden dividend of 7c a share after posting record net sales revenue of $800.4 million in the year to March 31.

The net revenue was 7.4 per cent up on Zespri's record sales last year of $744.8 million, which was itself 7 per cent higher than in 2000.

Zespri said the announcement of the intended dividend 12 months earlier than forecast had pushed up demand for its shares. Orchard owners were looking for $1.80 a share compared with the longstanding mark of $1 each.

- NZPA