Northland's kiwifruit industry set to double

Kerikeri kiwifruit grower Dave Kelly says the industry doubling its worth in Northland is good news for all.

Northland's kiwifruit industry is set to boom, with a new report showing earnings will more than double to $72 million and the number of jobs in the sector soar from 182 to 688 by 2030.

The forecast growth has been welcomed by Kerikeri grower Dave Kelly, who said the predictions were great news for the industry and the wider community, which would benefit from the sector booming.

Just a few years after the PSA virus threatened to wipe out the country's kiwifruit industry, the new report forecasts unprecedented growth after growers converted their crops to the PSA-resistant SunGold variety, with many Northland growers in their second season of "growing gold".

A report from the University of Waikato shows the new varieties breeding programme for kiwifruit has been a major contributor to the growth. Kiwifruit's contribution to New Zealand Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is set to increase from $2.6 billion in 2015/16 to $6.14 billion in 2030, with an additional 29,000 New Zealand jobs, driven by the new cultivar Zespri SunGold.

Northland earns about $30.6 million a year from kiwifruit, but the report says that will grow to $72 million by 2030 - a 135 per cent increase - with another 506 jobs by 2030, up from 182 now.

Kelly said the growth would have a huge impact for the industry in Northland.

"It's not just the money, but the jobs too and wider impact. Horticulture is often a kick start into employment for many people and this will create far more opportunities. But it's not just those involved directly in the industry who will benefit," he said.

"There are the support sectors, IT, logistics, picking, packing, transportation. The industry is also very high tech these days - we have the technology to test what the taste of the fruit is going to be like while it's still growing - and it's extremely exciting for us. It's a quite well-paid industry with some managers of larger orchards earning upwards of $200,000 a year in the Bay of Plenty."

Kelly said this year's winter chill - needed to set the flowers - had already been better than last winter and the canopies fuller so next season's crop was looking really good. He picked 130,000 trays this season and expected that to grow to 170,000 next.

He said the only things that could hold the industry back from expanding further were the lack of water near suitable blocks that could be converted to kiwifruit.

"There's ample land up here, but we need more water to grow. The Kerikeri irrigation scheme had a huge impact on bringing horticulture to Kerikeri on the scale it is, but a lot of the land (around Kerikeri) has been subdivided into smaller blocks so there are not many large blocks available that have suitable water resources," he said.

"If the Government wanted to do anything to help they could set up water storage up here and that would give a greater economic return than probably anything else they could do. That would allow us to expand even more."

Zespri SunGold Kiwifruit (also known as Gold3) came out of a breeding programme and the report finds that without it the New Zealand industry would be less than half the size of the 2030 projections.

Zespri General Manager Innovation Carol Ward says Zespri commissioned the report to better understand the impact the kiwifruit industry has in the regions, for Maori and for NZ as a whole, as well the growth ahead.

"The New Zealand kiwifruit industry has a goal of increasing kiwifruit consumption around the world and is on track to more than double global sales to $4.5 billion by 2025, driven by this great new kiwifruit variety, Zespri SunGold," she said.

"Last season (2016-17) 46 million trays of Zespri SunGold were sold with an export value of $686 million, up 70 per cent from the previous year."

The investment in the partnership includes $13.5 million from the Government and $29.2 million from Zespri, as well as significant internal funding from Plant & Food Research.