Police share stories of heroism, trauma and swimming through a sea of apples as Cyclone Gabrielle swept through Hawke's Bay.
Video / Eastern District Police
Hawke’s Bay growers are rapt with the “excellent” spring weather to date, which is setting up a potentially bumper season ahead including for the 2025 apple harvest.
A good start to the 2024/25 season has coincided with a study being released by NZ Apples and Pears highlighting theimpact the apple and pear industry has on Hawke’s Bay and the wider country.
The study found that during 2023, which was an extremely tough year for growers due to Cyclone Gabrielle, the apple and pear industry injected $991 million of total revenue impact into the region.
Hawke’s Bay is the country’s leading apple producer and grows about two-thirds of the nation’s apples, the vast majority of which are exported.
The nearly $1 billion injection was made up of orchard revenue and “flow-on industry and spending linkages”, with related sectors that benefited including support services, building cleaning services, pest control services, and fertiliser manufacturing.
Comparable figures were unavailable for 2022 or 2024 as the study was the first of its kind in a decade, according to NZ Apples and Pears.
Meanwhile, Hawke’s Bay Fruit Growers Association president Brydon Nisbet said great spring weather was setting up a promising 2024/25 season, as the region continued to recover from Cyclone Gabrielle.
“It’s been an excellent spring for the start of the 2024/25 season. We’ve had a lot of really good weather - we haven’t had a lot of rainfall.”
He said it had also been a good winter which helped “the buds set”.
He said the apple season was tracking about two to three weeks early, compared to last year.
“That means the [apple] harvest will begin earlier which means we can get our produce out to the global markets quicker - which is always a good thing.”
He said you can generally get strong prices when fruit hits markets early. The apple harvest runs from February to April/May each year.
NZ Apples and Pears did not have Hawke’s Bay-specific figures for 2024, but confirmed 18.3 million tray carton equivalents (TCEs) of apples were exported nationally earlier this year, up from 17.35 million TCEs in 2023.
Gary Hamilton-Irvine is a Hawke’s Bay-based reporter who covers a range of news topics including business, councils, breaking news and cyclone recovery. He formerly worked at News Corp Australia.
