Welcome to this week’s edition of Frankly Speaking – our grower and stakeholder update bringing you the latest Seeka and Industry .
Over the past week post harvest teams have loaded out 500K trays. As we move into the final weeks of shipping to Europe, the loadout volumes are increasing and this is keeping the teams busy. The majority of the SunGold conventional fruit is now ordered with shipping planned to finish in three weeks. The final export orders for gold organic have been filled with the remaining fruit to be sold on the local market. There are 2 million trays of Hayward conventional remaining in store and we expect this to half in the next two weeks and be down to 1 million trays at week 40 with shipping expected to be completed at week 46. The last of the Hayward organic inventory is scheduled to be completed at week 44.
Seeka Grower Council met this week. At this meeting the councillors for the coming year were confirmed. There were three new members elected to the council; Rory Bragg, Alex Griffin and Vance Skudder. Jack Price one of the original council members was honoured for his services to the council and was appointed as a Patron director. John Griffin, one of the original councillors elected in 2002 retired from the council. We thank John for his attendance and his efforts representing growers on our council. Counsellors give their time freely, and at times it has been a challenging role and we applaud John’s attendance.
There were some gnarly issues considered at the meeting. The switch of packaging by Zespri to new graphics hasn’t been handled well with a problem in SunGold Jumbo carryover stocks. The change of the Zespri refresh was forecast to cost the grower pool $11m. The industry has ended up with over $5m of old graphic Jumbo packaging stock. Zespri is of the view that this should be compensated for by SunGold growers, increasing the cost of the brand refresh to $13.6m. This packaging will then unsustainably be trucked and recycled, when other than having the old Zespri graphic it could be used in the 2021 season.
Stewart Moss provided an update on the taste review committee working group recommendations for 2021. This group has worked over seven weeks to recommend a series of well thought out mechanisms to deliver a more sustainable and equitable system for 2021. These changes will be considered by the Industry over the next month.
The Grower Council approved the distribution of monies to growers – with significant payments this month and reviewed the overall financial forecast pack for Seeka Growers for 2020. Seeka has implemented a new forecasting tool, which has improved the accuracy and format of our reporting to growers.
Fruit quality continues to perform well both onshore and offshore. Zespri presented at the council meeting deliveries in market are tracking to forecast and the low fruit loss for all categories means there is a potential for an upside gain to the OGR forecast. The next forecast from Zespri is due in October.
All Seeka growers are welcome to come along to the council meeting. Your CRM can let you know when the meetings are being held.
Thank you to all of you who have contributed to support Vaetasi’s wife and daughter back in Samoa. Your generosity has raised just under $20,000 for the benefit of the family. We will update you on the final fund when we get there and are talking to Mr Apple about both their and our contribution.
If you would like to contribute, please click the link here.
To the numbers:
Kind regards
Michael
Seeka Key
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