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Week ending Sunday 26 April 2020 Welcome to this Week 17 Seeka grower and stakeholder update. Seeka has now packed 15.744m trays and shipped 9.155m trays for the New Zealand kiwifruit harvest 2020. For SunGold we are pushing to substantially complete the harvest this week with only a few days required into week 19 to complete harvest. Growers’ patience right across the industry is being tested all understandably wanting their fruit off. The reality is at the sheds the fruit still looks good, brix’s being packed right now are good and not seeing alarming softs, regional variation not-withstanding. We have carefully managed our canopies and are reasonably satisfied. This is not a typical harvest year and we have really been under pressure right throughout the last 6 weeks. At the same time Zespri are calling for Hayward, with very low levels in inventory right across the Industry. Seeka will be down to less than 200k trays in store at the end of week 18. Seeka has packed nearly 30% of the Industry’s Hayward to date, with a high layered percentage. We will focus on Hayward from early week 19 and push this through to completion targeted at late May or early June. It’s been a remarkable harvest, with an abnormal number of challenges. Yet we have supplied all of our orders and intend to continue doing that. We have packed our market share or more of each variety and achieving a high layered percentage. Labour continues to be the biggest issue. Right across the Industry, most post-harvest companies are reporting staff shortages, and very high employee turnover. During the week, Seeka lobbied Ministers in Wellington to facilitate easier access to Hawkes Bay RSE workers who have become or are becoming available from the apple harvest to work in the kiwifruit industry. Seeka is hundreds of people short and these people could be used both to address our post-harvest shortage but then provide labour for the winter pruning mission. Even though these people will be untrained, at least we will have people to do the job. Thankfully all the workers at the Kiwi Corral have tested negative to COVID-19 and have returned to work. We should all be grateful to the local DHB, who uncovered the issue through tracing, worked quickly to contain any issue and who brilliantly coordinated and communicated with both of the major companies involved. I have directly expressed our joint gratitude. To the numbers:
Michael |
Seeka Key
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