Avocado growers are expected to be the winners in a joint venture to export avocados to Japan that will see 60,000 trays in the Japanese market this season.
Three avocado exporters - Freshco, Primor Produce and Team Avocado - are co-operating under the brand Avanza to send the avocados to Japan.
Avanza
spokesman and Team Avocado director Alistair Young said he was keen on the sort of commercial co-operation the three firms had put in place.
"The bottom line is that it improves returns to orchardists," Mr Young said.
Until Avanza began operating last year, sending 25,000 trays to Japan, New Zealand's crop of about 2.5 million trays had only two export destinations, Australia and the United States.
The three exporters making up the joint venture control about 80 per cent of the New Zealand crop.
Last month, Japanese fruit industry chiefs, representing Itochu Corporation, Dole Japan and Global Fruit Company, visited the Bay of Plenty to look at the avocado industry.
"We took our customers right through the harvest and packing operations to give them a better understanding," Freshco's product manager Wade Gillooly said.
Japanese representative of Dole Tatsuyuki Shibata said the New Zealand avocado was a good-quality and excellent-tasting fruit which had been identified as being ideal for Japan's winter season.
Shibata said they had ordered about 100,000 trays this season and eventually much bigger volumes would be wanted.
But those quantities had to wait until New Zealand's volumes improved.
Young said he believed this year's avocado export crop would not be much more than 1.2 million trays because of bad weather at fruit set last year.
Last season the avocado export crop was 1.3 million trays with about one million trays sold in the local market.
- NZPA
