Welcome to our grower and stakeholder update, at the first weekly cut off for SunGold. Fruit packed up until midnight last night has earned an estimated $3.41 per tray and from midnight last night to midnight Friday $2.35 per tray. (Noting the exact value paid is size weighted).
Our teams managed to pack 792k SunGold conventional trays (16% of the Industry) and 22.5k SunGold organic trays (48% of the Industry) before the cut of at midnight. By virtue of the way Zespri have set up the season, our sheds are now largely sitting idle waiting for clearances today having cleared our yesterday’s fruit on time and having nothing to get on with today’s maturity results not due until 2pm. It makes life a little frustrating as we try to run a safe business, and maintain staffing in the sheds.
To their credit, Zespri are making steps towards rectifying the numerous issues in the maturity clearance system.
We wanted to take some time to explain why the TZG results are lower for SunGold conventional in the smaller sizes. This is explained in the following graph.
The orange line shows you how the TZG used to be calculated and the blue line how it is calculated today. Significantly (as shown in the red circle on the chart above), between the MTS (16.1% for size 16-36 and 16.6% for size 39) and a dry matter of 17% there is no change to the TZG. The TZG starts increasing from 17% dry matter and, then the line is a straight line to the maximum TZG. The maximum for sizes 16-33 is 0.86, for size 33 is 0.78, and size 36 is 0.68.
The effect is profound by size – with bigger effects on smaller sizes because often the smaller size fruit have a lower dry matter percentage. This is shown in the following two tables (if you are interested!). 2019 represents a high dry matter year and the 2017 low dry matter year.
Season 2019; Week 11; Average DM (30S) 17.81
|
Count Size |
16 |
18 |
22 |
25 |
27 |
30 |
33 |
36 |
|
Dry Matter |
18.71 |
18.45 |
18.19 |
18 |
17.9 |
17.81 |
17.73 |
17.62 |
|
Old TZG |
0.77 |
0.71 |
0.67 |
0.64 |
0.62 |
0.60 |
0.57 |
0.54 |
|
New TZG |
0.71 |
0.64 |
0.59 |
0.56 |
0.54 |
0.52 |
0.49 |
0.46 |
Season 2017; Week 12; Average DM (30S) 16.74
|
Count Size |
16 |
18 |
22 |
25 |
27 |
30 |
|
Dry Matter |
18.94 |
18.29 |
17.66 |
17.21 |
16.96 |
19.74 |
|
Old TZG |
0.74 |
0.58 |
0.46 |
0.39 |
0.34 |
|
|
New TZG |
0.67 |
0.50 |
0.38 |
0.32 |
0.32 |
|
As you can see there are significant differences in the TZG. 2019 was a high dry matter year and 2017 a low dry matter year and in fact sizes 30 and smaller didn’t clear. Of concern to us, is the wide variation in the orchards this year. We have examples where large sizes have very high TZG’s and the medium and small sizes very low. This has not mirrored what we expected in our monitoring and we have asked Zespri to check their calculation formula.
The numbers
Trays packed by packhouse at 17 March 3pm
|
Packhouse Name |
GA1CK |
GA2CK |
GA1OB |
GA2OB |
Total |
|
Seeka Aongatete |
17,125 |
277 |
|
|
17,402 |
|
Seeka HukaPak |
170,588 |
2,839 |
33,027 |
1,313 |
207,767 |
|
Seeka Kerikeri |
124,001 |
|
|
|
124,001 |
|
Seeka KKP |
99,630 |
1,898 |
|
|
101,528 |
|
Seeka Main Road |
99,523 |
2,552 |
|
|
102,076 |
|
Seeka Oakside |
264,556 |
6,435 |
|
|
270,991 |
|
Seeka Transpack |
41,172 |
844 |
|
|
42,016 |
|
Total |
816,594 |
14,845 |
33,027 |
1,313 |
865,780 |
Kind regards
Michael
Seeka Key
Contacts