Welcome to our Week 27 updateThanks to our Northland Kiwifruit and Avocado Growers who took the time to meet with Annmarie and I this week in the Far North and KeriKeri. The Seeka Growers Council met yesterday to review the July payments to growers. Significant payments are being made to growers across all varieties with the exception of Zespri SweetGreen which will receive nil fruit value payments this month and next.
Seeka and the Council have moved to defer some charges to maximise the cashflow to coincide with the heavy outflows for pruning. The Council has been investigating anomalies around the Zespri Supplier Accountability process. The Accountability mechanism tries to encourage and reward better quality fruit to be supplied to the market. The Council has concerns about supplier accountability and Period 1 [the early shipping in the season]. Typically this fruit is provided by Seeka in specification, has some treatment applied to it by Zespri while in transit to the market to ensure it is market ready on arrival. The problem is that some of the fruit arrives with too much treatment. For Period 1 supply there are no Accountability premiums, only penalties. Seeka typically provides a greater Period 1 share than its true market share exposing us to higher quality costs even though our fruit turns over very quickly. Complicating this is Seeka provides the fruit at the temperature specification, having invested heavily in pre-cooling. Other operators who cannot meet the temperature specification have been able to get exemptions from quality costs, which adds a new dimension to the issues. The Council has asked for some further work to be undertaken, as the Council has a concern that growers are being hit with quality costs for fruit provided in specification and subjected to treatment [including ethylene] that they have no control over and which there is no accountability, ironic in itself. Generally we are satisfied with the kiwifruit inventory. SunGold is loading out nicely, the teams are starting to check more fruit but so far so good. Hayward conventional likewise is performing well, and organic very well but Zespri has drawn more fruit from Seeka than our proportionate share – something we are talking to Zespri about. |
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| Seeka has asked Kiwifruit New Zealand [KNZ] to confirm that the changes made to the Hayward Taste System, in SweetGreen G14 including the changes to thresholds and imposing a minimum threshold, including the ability to exclude fruit is indeed legal. We have complied with a request by KNZ to outline the specifics of our concerns which we have provided [and which we are happy to share with any grower who can get it through their CRM]. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
To the numbers: [to midnight Sunday 9 July]
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Stop PressAs we go to publish this blog some of the July payment advices emailed to Xtra accounts have been returned as undeliverable, once again impacted by the change of the Xtra email server. Any undeliverable payment advices will be posted out to growers. What Growers can do to ensure that they continue to receive automated emails from Seeka: If you need assistance with this please contact your CRM. Regards Michael |
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