Thank you to all of you who attended our After 5 sessions. They have been well attended and the team have enjoyed catching up prior to harvest.
We have successfully commenced the New Zealand Kiwifruit harvest. All the sheds from Kerikeri through the Bay of Plenty and Coromandel have started packing and we are well up on the pace. At the same time, we have purchased Aongatete and are in the process of operationally aligning the companies. Aongatete comes to Seeka with great people, well maintained coolstores and equipment and excellent growers.
As we work towards the end of the first kiwistart week for SunGold, line ups at all packhouses are being managed to ensure fruit is packed before Tuesday midnight when the rate changes from an average of $4.09 to $2.54 per tray. We are doing everything to maximise the volume of fruit packed for our growers and have enjoyed some tremendous and well-presented lines. Thank you.
Zespri has advised that because of the large amount of early maturity SunGold they may revise their procurement strategy which would reduce the current supply cap from 14m to 8m trays. Zespri are concerned that we might over procure low maturity fruit and pay heavy premiums for fruit that might not be sent to the market early. A second supply cap would open for 6m trays straight after the 8m volumes was achieved and this 6m would have a higher maturity standard (amended colour criteria). Zespri will give the industry 48 hours notice of the first cap closing and the new maturity standard. It is possible this could happen at the end of the week, we will keep you updated when this is announced. We will need to be very coordinated with our growers.
We have not had any significant safety issues on start-up; but we have already seen a number of samples not collected by Eurofins due to long grass. Samples not being collected can cause delays which have the potential to miss kiwistart money.
Seeka is required under the terms of the supply agreement to remind all our growers that when you sign the “yellow Zespri form” (schedule 5) you are agreeing to Zespri or its representatives being provided with an accurate map of the orchard and list of any known hazards which exist at the time the visit is scheduled. So please make sure your maps are updated and let us know if they need updating.
Although we have all our sheds running staffing levels are not as good as we would like them to be so if anyone knows someone looking for work please send them to one of our packhouses.
To the Statistics (only SunGold packed so far)
| Industry packed trays | Seeka packed |
| 2,869,609 | 524,490 (18%) |
Cap 1 first past the post target volume 8,000,000 trays
Happy and safe harvesting
Regards
Michael
Seeka Key
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