Welcome to the Week 33 Frankly Speaking Update. It is positively warmer, and our orchard managers, contractors and workers across the industry have been able to get on and try and catch up with their orchard work.
I was able to spend some time being briefed on the new requirements from Zespri to supply them as a grower in 2017 and to be GLOBALGAP accredited. This process is going to take a lot longer than it has previously, a “professional” grower might take 3.5 hours to complete the audit. The new audit process will require our auditors to sight such things a wages slips for on orchard workers and complete a number of new checks. We will send out a check list to all our growers in an attempt to make this arduous process easier.
Fruit continues to be loaded. The China market has reopened but the process of checking the fruit is intense and post-harvest has been struggling to achieve the volumes required to meet market demand. As an example, today the Industry shortaged nearly 400 pallets of fruit destined for China as either it struggled to process and repack it in time or decided that they didn’t want to expose their fruit to that level of rework and fruit loss. As an Industry it’s important that we fulfil these orders to maximise the returns to growers, and Zespri have just got to get the commercial mechanisms right to ensure that we optimise every pallet we can send there.
Collaborative marketing applications close on 31 August and Seeka has been working up its suite of applications designed to deliver incremental Hayward sales and returns to growers. Kiwifruit New Zealand have adopted changes in process and timing for applications to be considered by them. We believe our applications again are accretive for growers and deliver incremental sales and returns. Here is hoping.
To the numbers [as at midnight 21 August]
Kiwistart payments made
Thanks to the hard work of the Entities Team, Kiwistart payments were made at the end of last week. And I heard the chorus of sighs of relief from growers. Thanks Geoff, Susan and the team.
Regards
Michael
Seeka Key
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