Welcome to today’s Seeka grower and stakeholder update.
The team is continuing to settle the operations and the process of sampling, clearing, harvesting, packing and loading out fruit is running well. Our primary focus has been on the safe operation of the business and all people working in and around us. The clearance process is working and most sheds are now calling for more fruit as production rates increase. The team is doing a good job and we have clearances to get on with and we are lining up the orchards in front of the picking crews.
We understand that there might be a little bit of frustration with how Seeka is controlling the sampling process, but we want to keep the whole system in equilibrium and not overload the labs, pickers or the sheds.
The Hayward conventional week 13/14 rate has been extended until Sunday 5 April, with all other Hayward rate cutoffs remaining unchanged. (Friday midnight).
We continue to carefully review and monitor our capacity plans. Our mission is to harvest the entire crop within reasonable timeframes and our planning indicates that we can do that. We are very satisfied with the performance of our Kerikeri and Peninsula sites.
The production of the screens is underway and they are being installed at Oakside now, with Main Road, Katikati already done. They will be progressively rolled out to all drops through the week and we will come back and do the tray prep side of the machines next week. The operations crew are focussing on increasing production and packing more of the market preferred layered packs through the course of the week. Of course we are going to need more people. Our team supported by Annmarie Lee are driving our recruiting efforts, in addition key staff are being trained to replace those who have dropped out of the system. If you know of anyone looking for a job please call 0800SEEKAJOBS.
We are very pleased to have packed 4.522m trays to date including 3.962m trays of SunGold. We are very happy with the general quality and the teams have appreciated the clean lines, it’s made life easier. Fruit size in both SunGold and Hayward are smaller than previous years with SunGold at 29.06 and Hayward at 34.26. We will continue to communicate a bit more than usual really to keep all our grower base informed about where we are at, what our focus is and where we are heading.
To the numbers:
|
SunGold conventional trays |
Industry packed 19.4m |
Seeka 3.9m (20.1%) |
|
Average size |
Industry 29.3 |
Seeka 29.0 |
|
SunGold Organic trays |
Industry packed 203k |
Seeka 13k (6.4%) |
|
Average size |
Industry 30.6 |
Seeka 29.1 |
|
Hayward conventional trays |
Industry packed 1.7m |
Seeka 545k (32.0%) |
|
Average size |
Industry 33.86 |
Seeka 34.26 |
|
Sweet Green trays |
Industry packed 65k |
Seeka nil |
|
Average size |
Industry 37.9 |
Seeka nil |
Kind regards and thank you for your support
Michael
Seeka Key
Contacts