Frankly Speaking

Frankly Speaking - Week 8
28 February 2018

Welcome to this weeks update.

The kiwiberry harvest is well under way with approximately 40% of the crop now packed. Sales in market have been going well. So far everything we have packed has been dispatched to the market within a day of packing. The early start has meant that we have been able to take advantage of good demand and pricing particularly. The team is over the top of the maturity and pretty much picking as orchards clear with the new capacity created by the new machine well received and well utilized.  We are expecting to start to stock build but to date the fruit has moved as we have packed it.

Kiwifruit

Zespri has released the February forecast and OGR’s per tray have increased for all categories other than the HE (G14) which has had a small decrease.

Pool    February Fct OGR Change per tray
HWCK    $6.540 $0.17 up
HWOB    $8.595 $0.13 up
HE (G14) $5.470 $0.00 down
Gold3 $10.011 $0.094 up

What the monitor data is telling us

It is still early in the season especially for dry matter predictions.  Fruit size is currently very large and the largest in the monitor history. Dry matter is similar to the last two years.
Results from the current monitor data for Gold 3 are showing:

  • Fruit size is tracking very similar to last year, with the comment that size is still as good as we have ever seen it. Fruit is very large.
  • Dry matter accumulation has slowed (vs DAMB). Compared to calendar date it is as low as we have seen it in the last 4 years data.
  • Growth is expected to continue on average about 4gm per week for the next 2-3 weeks (unless the sunshine disappears, although it has slowed in those orchards with very large fruit).
  • We have reports that fruit with damage in the orchard is softening and rotting quickly and we will have our pickers on standby to limit this fruit arriving at the shed.

Hayward results are showing:

  • Fruit size remains the same as last season (by date), but we are seeing a large spread of size in the data. On average the size is the same but we have orchards with very small fruit and orchards with very large fruit.
  • The rate of growth has slowed, but remains as good as we have seen over the past 4 years data.  We are expecting to see this rate of growth continue for the next 3-4 weeks.
  • Dry matter continues to perform the same as in previous season (except for 2014) by date

Kiwistart Rates

The indicative kiwistart rates were published last year, the rates are shown in the tables below.

Gold 3


 

Hayward Conventional


Hayward Organic


 

As we move closer to harvest can all our kiwifruit growers please make sure:

  • All Zespri documentation has been completed
  • Loading pad preparation is completed
  • Grass is kept mown on the Orchard as Eurofins won’t sample if it is longer than 30cm

If you have any questions please give your CRM a call.

Regards

Michael

Seeka Key
Contacts