Seeka has continued to have a successful harvest season for 2016. There have been no significant safety issues to report.
The G3 Sungold cap for the “first-past-the-post” closed on Saturday night and all attention switched to processing Hayward by midnight Sunday night. Seeka is ahead of market share in both but the unsettled weather, delayed and lost shipping, continuing growth in Hayward fruit size and finite capacity means that it is important that we continue to chase clearances and process fruit. The G3 Sungold is now in an allocated volume portion of the season for modified clearance and we are looking for mainpack clearances now.
The “first-past-the-post” period for Hayward continues.
The first of the Hayward organics has been processed and substantially shipped and was excellent. More would be appreciated.
The Sweetgreen quality continues to be mixed. Some orchards are developing fruit drop, have low dry matter, or are turning gold, or are struggling to reach maturity. Some others are excellent – with high yields and good quality.
Our attention has also switched to the Hayward crop and achieving the new threshold minimum taste standard [MTS] of 15.5 in what is a low dry matter year. We are now undertaking a complete dry matter survey sample to ascertain the volume of fruit that may not achieve the MTS. Its concerning as much as 10% may not make the threshold and already we have encouraged some growers to re-open girdles to try and encourage dry matter development [or in the case of G3 remove small fruit].
It’s a concerning feature of the season and we are worried about the consequence – and for Hayward whether the threshold should be reduced back to last years level of14.5. If you are concerned about this please raise it with your Seeka Growers Council member or with the KGI representatives.
To the numbers [as at midnight 17 April]
Pocket Pack Issue
Seeka has approximately 410,000 G3 trays packed into pocket packs [plix] that were sourced from the supplier which has a very low level of detected grease contamination in the plix. The incidence is understood to be at the ratio of between 1:8,000 and 1:10,000 trays.
Seeka, with Zespri, has developed a light tunnel which is using a specific spectrum of UV light that fluoresces any contamination on the pocket packs. Because this light is damaging to the natural eye, a special unit has been made that projects the image onto a computer screen. Lights were sourced from the USA and four tunnels have been manufactured by the Seeka team. Seeka now has teams checking the product 24 hours a day. We expect the process to be completed in about 10 days and to progressively ship the checked product 100% free of any issue.
Happy and safe harvesting!
Michael
Seeka Key
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