Welcome to our week 17 update. The weather over the weekend has been terrible with torrential rain and flooding. Growers are invited to check their orchards for damage particularly track access and loading pad for the yet to be picked orchards, to ensure that pickers, contractors and equipment have safe access and egress.
Harvest is proceeding well. The wet weather enabled tired harvest and post-harvest crews to have a well-earned day off and for the teams to clear the curing canopies. Our goal is to substantially complete the SunGold harvest before the next weather event. While generally the SunGold fruit is in good shape, there are occasional spongy lines and the continuation of over-ripes particularly in large sizes. Our teams have deployed people at the bin-tip to remove these as much as possible with the post-harvest teams wanting to pack a good storing inventory.
Zespri has provided an advanced movement mechanism for earlier shipping to Europe and Japan. The mechanism allows operators to store fruit in offshore coolstores ahead of market demand. While the commercial mechanisms that wrap around the mechanism are favourable it comes with some risk of fruit quality that can be quite punitive. Seeka strictly has sufficient coolstorage. But there is a consequence in not participating being that the market is flooded [potentially oversupplied] that the non-participating supplier doesn’t get an order for that size and packed product that remains in New Zealand for an inordinate time. So it is complicated.
Brixes in the Hayward fruit is starting to climb and there are clearances now in the mid-7 range. Huka Pak Machine 2 remains processing Hayward 24 hours, and we will swing further capacity to Hayward as the volume comes on and as we complete the SunGold packout. We are satisfied with the Hayward fruit quality presented and thank growers for their efforts.
Industry Packed 38,100,766 Seeka Packed 6,872,716 [18%]
Industry average size 30.28 Seeka average size 29.81
Loaded out 3,245,838 In store 3,626,878
On order [next 2 weeks] 783,797
Large size profile continues – 30% of the fruit is a size 22!
Industry Packed 864,222 Seeka Packed 98,497 [18%]
Industry average size 27.57 Seeka average size 24.89
Loaded out 55,074 In store 43,423
On order [next 2 weeks] 7,046
Industry Packed 18,909,091 Seeka Packed 4,347,751 [23%]
Industry average size 30.28 Seeka average size 29.81
Loaded out 2,536,351 In store 1,811,400
On order [next 2 weeks] 1,455,583
Busy loadout weeks
Industry Packed 864,222 Seeka Packed 166,521 [19%]
Industry average size 33.24 Seeka average size 32.99
Loaded out 133,518 In store 53,003
On order [next 2 weeks] 40,533
Nice organic size profile, good orders, waiting for mainpack
Industry Packed 890,616 Seeka Packed 52,351 [6%]
Industry average size 35.36 Seeka average size 35.99
Loaded out 52,351 In store 0
On order [next 2 weeks] 0
All done – just the part pallets being consolidated at another supplier. Successfully completed thanks
The national pool has a hail insurance policy held on your behalf, once a year it is reviewed. Hail cover is provided for kiwifruit damaged on the vine as a direct result of a hail strike unable to meet the export standard. The Green pools have a cover of $6 million and the Gold and other variety pools have cover with a limit of $6 million. The first $3 million is self-insured by the pool and a commercially purchased insurance policy covers the next $3 million.
Some of the questions that need to be considered are:
You pay for this insurance and this is your chance to have your say. Feedback should be sent to your CRM so we can forward it to Seeka Growers.
Happy and safe harvesting
Kind regards
Michael
Seeka Key
Contacts