The complicated start to the season has continued, and weather has started to play its hand. Warm nights have delayed the Hayward harvest, while we have good black seeds counts, the brix levels stay stubbornly low. While we have packed some fruit, the arrival of cooler nights should see an influx of clearances and full flow to the sheds.
The post-harvest teams have been able to recharge after a hectic start to the SunGold. We are about 25% of the way through the harvest of this variety, and have had to contend with multiple deadlines in a week, short notice planning changes by Zespri and weather. The stop-start nature of our business means it’s really hard to maintain a production flow, and labour to the sheds. It’s particularly inefficient and at times frustrating and the plan just keeps changing. While we largely incident free from a safety perspective, some of our people have worked long hours and in my opinion the way we run out early season delivers an unsatisfactory safety profile. I have raised this with Zespri.
Really premiums should be paid for delivering fruit to a vessel rather than picking immature fruit into store allowing post-harvest operators the benefit to set a stable plan to achieve the vessel demand.
In Hayward we are now looking for kiwistart clearances. In SunGold we are completing the week 15 allocation and looking for mainpack clearances with Zespri removing the week 15/16 incentive yesterday.
To the numbers:
SunGold Conventional trays
| Industry Packed 17.445m | Seeka 3.752m (21.5%) | |
| Average size | Industry 29.4 | Seeka 28.8 |
| Seeka In store | 2.393m | On order 1.147m |
SunGold Organic trays
| Industry Packed 189k | Seeka 26k (13.8%) | |
| Average size | Industry 29.3 | Seeka 25.3 |
| Seeka In store | 26K | On order 12K |
Hayward Conventional trays
| Industry Packed 337k | Seeka 149k (39.6%) | |
| Average size | Industry 33.6 | Seeka 30.5 |
| Seeka In store | 149k | On order 294k |
Annmarie Lee
It’s with both sadness and appreciation for her efforts at Seeka that I advise that Annmarie Lee has resigned as our General Manager Growers and Marketing. Annmarie has had an extensive career at Seeka having been a client relationship manager, scheduler, establisher and manager of SeekaFresh as well as the General Manager Growers and Marketing. Annmarie has decided to retire to enjoy her grandkids and travel. She will leave us mid-September and we will have a celebration for Annmarie with our growers closer to the time.
Happy and safe harvesting
Michael
Seeka Key
Contacts