Welcome to this update of Frankly Speaking, our blog that keeps the growers and stakeholders up to date with what’s happening at Seeka and the Industry. As we push through to the end of the SunGold harvest, our attention is drawn to the Hayward. The sheds will progressively swing to Hayward from Sunday, with most sheds packing through the weekend to assure a timely SunGold completion. Most of the sheds are happy with the quality of the closing SunGold being handled, some with a degree of softs but in reality no more prevalent than previous seasons.
The Seeka Grower Council met via zoom earlier today and discussed the arrangements as we head to recommence the Hayward harvest and specifically the program for the week 19 (next week). All fruit handled from now must be at mainpack clearance criteria and ship by rules don’t apply.
Zespri is paying a mainpack submit premium next week to growers packed on an allocated volume of 895,820 trays for Seeka.
Firstly the Seeka Growers Council has agreed that the incentive paid by Zespri in week 19 will be pooled across all growers packed in that week. Seeka has an overhang of week 18 kiwistart allocated Hayward fruit that will be harvested and will be packed in week 19. The harvest and packing of this fruit was deferred to allow the SunGold completion. These designated growers will have the option to either take any premium payable next week or have it go into a time pool. If these growers take the premium, they also take the fruit risk.
All other growers handled in this week will have the election of a time pool only and the premiums for this fruit will be applied into the time pool of their election.
The volume of fruit scheduled means that all fruit in this week will earn between $0.20 and $0.30 per tray handled and this outcome was considered an equitable outcome for all growers
Operationally it has been another busy week for the teams. The SunGold harvest remains on track to complete the middle of next week and in some of the regions harvest has finished. The industry has now submitted 80% of the SunGold crop and Seeka has packed 13.1m trays or 82%. Over the weekend the loadout teams have three charter vessels to supply to. These vessels are heading to Europe, Japan and China.
To the mid-week numbers:
| SunGold conventional trays | Industry packed 68m | Seeka 13.2m (19.3%) |
| Average size | Industry 29.5 | Seeka 29.4 |
| SunGold Organic trays | Industry packed 1.2m | Seeka 138k (11.6%) |
| Average size | Industry 29.8 | Seeka 29.3 |
| Hayward conventional trays | Industry packed 15.2m | Seeka 4.4m (29%) |
| Average size | Industry 33.4 | Seeka 33.3 |
| Hayward Organic trays | Industry packed 641k | Seeka 171k (26.7%) |
| Average size | Industry 37.2 | Seeka 37.7 |
| Sweet Green trays | Industry packed 230k | Seeka 18k (8%) |
| Average size | Industry 37.9 | Seeka 36.9 |
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