Welcome to this Seeka grower and stakeholder update until the end of week 15. Seeka has now commissioned all machines, and will bring Oakside 1 nightshift online tonight. Labour shortages continue to be a headache, with the sheds and picking crews having a high staff turnover which we don’t get with the RSE workforce. Every time we think we have filled all the vacancies, we are short again. Crews were surprised that even today (Public Holiday - Easter Monday) there were a number of no-shows and this is the first time I can recall that happening. The crews are chasing recruitment constantly.
The systems in the industry for labour simply haven’t worked optimally this year and are desperately in need of an overhaul at the end of the season.
The sheds are well buffered up with a lot of fruit under canopy and have enough to keep packing through this weather event. Our aim is to process more than 3m trays this week, and achieving this target is important to delivering our growers a timely harvest and close out.
We thank those growers in the queue for their patience with us; our plan is working in the COVID-19 modified environment we are operating in. We are packing the fruit and are delivering throughputs ahead of our required run rate. Zespri has a demand for Hayward as well as SunGold, with Hayward loading out quickly after packing.
In order to encourage the continuing packout of Hayward Zespri has increased the incentive. We have cleared a sufficient volume to meet the demand, and the following incentives now apply for Hayward conventional:
|
ISO Week |
Dates |
Rate |
|
15/16 |
Sat 11 April – Fri 17 April |
$0.58 |
|
16/17 |
Sat 18 April – Fri 24 April |
$0.46 |
|
17/18 |
Sat 25 April – Fri 1 May |
$0.20 |
At the same time, Seeka is continuing to pack a high level of layered product which is required and appreciated by Zespri.
The word from the markets is that they are “optimistically cautious”. As I have reported the first of the fruit in Japan sold out in record times so much so that they were out of stock waiting for the second ship to arrive. And although Japan COVID-19 situation has gotten worse over the last week the measures introduced to reduce the spread in Japan is not total lockdown and businesses are still operating. The China market has had its first arrivals and remains confident in selling the volume allocated to it this year. The first ship into Europe with NZ kiwifruit arrives next weekend and the plan Zespri has is to start sales in week 17. This is really early as sales usually commence in week 19, so two weeks earlier than other years. For those of you who are not so close to this part of the kiwifruit supply chain the Japan, China and Europe markets represent 75% of all NZ kiwifruit export sales. So with these three markets being in a strong position given current uncertainty, this is really positive for kiwifruit.
At the end of last night Seeka has packed 9.32m class 1 trays, had loaded out 5.87m trays with 3.45m trays in store. Our current loadouts have us shipping other 1.47m trays next week.
Thanks for your forbearance with us and please remember to be safe at this critical time of the year.
To the numbers:
|
SunGold conventional trays |
Industry packed 32.3m |
Seeka 6.2m (19.3%) |
|
Average size |
Industry 29.4 |
Seeka 29.4 |
|
Seeka in store |
2.1m |
On order 1.0m |
|
SunGold Organic trays |
Industry packed 486k |
Seeka 41k (8.5%) |
|
Average size |
Industry 30.3 |
Seeka 30.4 |
|
Seeka in store |
23k |
On order 17k |
|
Hayward conventional trays |
Industry packed 10.4m |
Seeka 2.8m (27.5%) |
|
Average size |
Industry 33.6 |
Seeka 33.6 |
|
Seeka in store |
1.10m |
On order 1.2m |
|
Hayward Organic trays |
Industry packed 409k |
Seeka 156k |
|
Average size |
Industry 37.4 |
Seeka 37.5 |
|
Seeka in store |
Nil |
On order nil |
|
Sweet Green trays |
Industry packed 167k |
Seeka 18k |
|
Average size |
Industry 37.8 |
Seeka 37.8 |
|
Seeka in store |
12k |
On order 5k |
Seeka Key
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