Please accept our latest weekly update to our Growers and Stakeholders on the latest fruit and Industry . We have now completed our SunGold programme for 2018 and our team are justifiably satisfied with our final fruit loss figure at 0.77% [will end up around 0.8%] about half the rate for the rest of the Industry. Thank you to all growers, contractors and staff for your fantastic fruit and a job well done.
Seeka’s Hayward organic fruit loss is just under 1% with 10K trays remaining instore. Our Hayward conventional fruit loss is tracking slightly higher than Industry but frankly speaking is still very low at week 42 at 2.0%. Seeka shipped a small volume of the preferential shipping put on for some parties by Zespri in mainpack and have yet to quality withdraw any fruit outside what was required by Zespri for crop management. We have taken the approach – what’s the point of packing good fruit only to voluntarily withdraw it later. In our opinion, quality withdraw should be used for extraordinary circumstances. We have asked Zespri to disclose the volume of fruit withdrawn by supplier so we can objectively assess whether this is a real issue or whether we are simply barking at the moon.
Orders to load out the remaining 1.33m trays in store are slowing and our teams working though the fruit with last shipping expected in six weeks’ time. Orders next week are for approximately 300K trays.
The avocado market has been soft in Australia, which can happen at this time of the year. Simply there is a convergence of Western Australian fruit and New Zealand fruit. We have slowed our harvest this week, will pick it back up next week. This year there seems to be a lot more colour in the fruit early and we are mindful that just as “nature waits for no-man”, maybe this year we just have to get on with it.
Finally brace yourself – there are only a few spots left in the famous Seeka ladies long lunch – scheduled for 8 November. This is an outstanding event and if you would like to have a great afternoon of fun and laughter with other Seeka ladies, click here to register for this years Secret Garden Party. Transport is provided.
Kind regards,
Michael
Seeka Key
Contacts
