Welcome to this week’s edition of Frankly Speaking – our grower and stakeholder update bringing you the latest Seeka and Industry . It’s a messy time of the year. Now as the shipping programmes end, focus is placed on all the details of the season readjusting and thinking about the mechanisms for next year.
Seeka has now completed the SunGold export programme. Fruit quality has been outstanding both on and offshore with Seeka’s fruit loss for the conventional category estimate of 0.9% and the organic category is 0.21%. It is a remarkable outcome considering all the issues and pressure at harvest time. Given these results have been achieved using fruit maturity only, it may well be an indication of hidden cost of the Industry running the taste programme the way that it has.
The Hayward organic shipping programme is finishing within two weeks and the last Hayward conventional charter shipment to Japan is planned for two weeks.
Last week Seeka Growers Council met, signed off the October grower payment and discussed a number of the current industry issues. Some of these are canvassed below.
Covid-19 impacted how the packhouses were operated. It is being recommended that the assumptions in the pack diff model are revised to reflect the Covid-19 packhouse impact. The result of this will be to increase the pack diff amount paid for SunGold layered trays. The council continues to support this recommendation.
The carryover packaging was discussed by the Council at its meeting in September and this continues to be debated in the industry forums. The council’s view has not changed, this packaging should be used. Zespri continues to have the view that this packaging should not be used next year and recycled, which will increase the cost to the pool by $2.9m to a forecast total cost of $14m for the brand refresh. It is simply a lot of money.
Zespri has suggested that they want to further adjust some of the SunGold kiwistart rates paid in week 13/14 rate for growers who harvest prior to this week commencing. Seeka Grower Council made the following comments to Zespri; this paper is too late, these growers were harvesting knowing that these rates were going to change and these rates do not need revising.
Stewart Moss provided an update on the taste review committee working group recommendations for 2021. This group has worked over two months to recommend a series of mechanisms to deliver a more sustainable and equitable system for 2021. In considering this over the last month several options have been added for the industries consideration.
Finally there has been a lot of discussion and rumours in the Industry about the three or four suppliers who have delivered poorer quality fruit this season. Sensibly Zespri auditors were denied access to post-harvest facilities in Covid-19 as they posed a significant cross infection risk bouncing from one packhouse and coolstore to the next. Unfortunately some operators seem to have used this as an opportunity to deliver fruit with higher packing defects to the market. For the record, Seeka is not one of them and holds to the position that costs should fall there they lay.
The council meetings are held monthly and all Seeka Growers are welcome to attend, contact your CRM if you would like to come along.
To the numbers:
Kind regards
Michael
Seeka Key
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