Please accept our grower update to the end of last week, and thank you for the feedback you have given thanking us for the clear reporting on our performance and the sales rates for the season. As a result of the analysis provided to growers by Seeka, we have been reminded of the confidentiality of sales information provided by Zespri, effectively restricting parties like Seeka from reporting to growers and seemingly forgetting whose sales are being reported.
Sales rates remain lacklustre, and have not really kicked up. Hayward sales to date are now below what they were at the same level as last year, which had a later start; and there are some 14.2m trays more to sell than there were at the same time in 2017. Hayward organic rates are likely affected by the change in sales recording processes in the USA but are slightly ahead of last year with 700k trays more to sell than last year. SunGold sales while 1.8m trays ahead of last year, still have 11.3m trays more to sell this year than last. In total over 25m more trays to sell at the same time as last year, and we have held at this rate for a few months now.
The reality is that there is a heat wave in Europe and an abundance of summer fruit. Asian markets are competing with local market fruit although it should be noted that Japan has had a great run. Collectively the Industry is cautiously looking forward to the next few weeks in the hope of a lift in the run rates which to be fair has traditionally occurred in the past. While officially there is no hint of crop management, the agreements are being worked on in the background.
The graphs on sales volume are below – we will include the pricing next time.
To remind you – Hayward conventional fortnightly run rates will need to be around 5.0m trays per fortnight to sell in a timely fashion.
To remind you Hayward organic will need to sell at the current rate of 0.3m trays per fortnight to complete in a timely fashion.
To remind you SunGold will need to sell at 4.2m trays per fortnight to complete in a timely fashion.
Seeka Growers on your behalf has a top up hail policy. This cover works alongside the Zespri Pool Hail Insurance cover, and provides hail insurance top up to Seeka supplying growers of $2.00 per tray up to a maximum of 10% for all Seeka trays combined.
The benefit of this cover is:
• No excess applies
• The Top-Up policy pays in addition to the Zespri hail pool
• A claim paid by the Zespri policy means the Top-Up claim is paid
• Policy premium costs Seeka Growers $0.006 cents per tray
I would note that relative fruit loss between Seeka and the Industry is distorted by the disproportionate volume of fruit sent by suppliers in the advanced shipping program. Slower loadouts, lower time related earnings are combining to a lower time related year.
Kind regards
Michael
Seeka Key
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