Welcome to this Seeka grower and stakeholder update – updating you on the latest at Seeka. In spite of a continuing labour shortage we have hit a new alert level 4 daily production record. The process of clearing orchards, scheduling harvest and packing is settling into a pattern. The post-harvest teams continue to learn new ways to optimise the production in this environment. There have been heavy load-outs with a lot of fruit supplied to the market.
Labour remains an issue and there is a constant turnover of personnel in the sheds which is creating its own set of challenges. Despite on-boarding new people every day we remain short staffed and seemingly only keeping pace with the departures. Nightshift, which traditionally has been resourced with RSE workers continues to be very challenging to staff. Our priority is to employ New Zealanders, but still need to get access to our skilled RSE workers, and the RSE’s currently in New Zealand have really saved our bacon. Extending their stay in New Zealand doesn’t fix our problem, as the next wave of scheduled RSE’s are experienced pruners. This is not just a kiwifruit labour supply issue the Apple Industry also has the same need to access their skilled RSE workforce.
The post-harvest team has been monitoring production, pack-out rates and crop to go by variety, region and altitude. At the moment Seeka’s daily packing is significantly ahead of market share, while packing a much higher percentage of layered pack types. The layered pack types are wanted by Zespri in key Asian markets, and in market these markets Zespri and customers are repacking out of bulk packs into layered packs to meet this demand. Packing into layered in New Zealand slows production, so it is remarkable that Seeka’s production remains ahead of our market share. We are pushing to keep over the top of the SunGold harvest while at the same time packing the required volume of Hayward fruit needed by Zespri to meet early market demand.
The scheduled completion dates are on or before 10 May for SunGold and on or before 4 June for Hayward, packing at 85% productivity and 5.5 days per week. We will keep you up to date on the progress and at the moment these are the latest dates for harvest completion. We are comfortable with the brixes and pressures we are seeing at the time of harvest. The teams are working their way through the harvest process to give you a timely completion to the harvest.
The Industry is now starting to contemplate how it is going to operate in future seasons with the withdrawal of Eurofins, and the necessary removal of taste for 2020. What will the taste system look like, how do we keep it simple yet deliver the marketer an optimal quality crop? What will the lab structure for the Industry look like, and how do we set up the information systems up and get them built for next year? The IAC will consider all of these matters and the approach for the Industry at its meeting next Friday.
Thanks for your support, perseverance and forbearance.
To the mid week numbers:
|
SunGold conventional trays |
Industry packed 37.6m |
Seeka 7.5 (19.9%) |
|
Average size |
Industry 29.4 |
Seeka 29.3 |
|
SunGold Organic trays |
Industry packed 628k |
Seeka 73k (11.6%) |
|
Average size |
Industry 30.3 |
Seeka 29.6 |
|
Hayward conventional trays |
Industry packed 12.4m |
Seeka 3.6m (33.5%) |
|
Average size |
Industry 33.6 |
Seeka 33.6 |
|
Hayward organic trays |
Industry 557k |
Seeka 164 (29.5%) |
|
Average size |
Industry 37.6 |
Seeka 37.7 |
|
Sweet Green trays |
Industry packed 167k |
Seeka 18k (11%) |
|
Average size |
Industry 37.8 |
Seeka 36.9 |
Seeka Key
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