Welcome to this week’s grower update. Loadouts continue to be slower than forecast as Zespri contends with softer markets and re-balances in market stock levels. Stock levels in market are a hangover from the advanced shipping during mainpack.
Our team has been closely monitoring the market reports to assess the sales rates and the likelihood that all the fruit will be sold. When we last looked at this Zespri had 26m more trays to sell than compared with the same time last year. The latest sales report shows that gap has widened slightly – and importantly Hayward makes up 14.5m trays, Hayward organic 0.8m trays and SunGold 11.4m trays. Admittedly the sales arrangements for the USA has changed which could be confusing the statistics to some extent but the outcome is the same. At this stage the sales rates need to lift, to sell all the fruit and to ensure a tidy finish to the sales programmes.
The following charts show the recent sales rates by fortnight by variety.
Hayward conventional deliveries to customer are averaging per fortnight, 4.26 million trays. From week 30 this means another 26 weeks on average for deliveries with a finish in ISO week four 2019. To complete sales prior to 2019 the delivery rate per fortnight needs to lift to five million trays on average.
The delivery rates to customers for Hayward organics per fortnight is 0.268m trays. At this average there are 18 weeks remaining to complete this programme [ISO week 48].
With deliveries to customer of 4.0m trays for Gold3 per fortnight this category has on average 14 weeks remaining to finish the programme in ISO week 44.
In other parts of our business, the avocado harvest commences in the Bay of Plenty – markets are good and the early indications for returns to growers positive. Our retail program will start in a few weeks and we have committed supply out to the end of January.
Kind regards
Michael
Seeka Key
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