Frankly Speaking – Week 13 Update Week ending Sunday 3 April
Our 2016 harvest campaign continues to be influenced by later maturity, lower dry matter and unsettled weather. Warm nights have delayed the Hayward harvest and there have been few clearances. Seeka has packed 40k trays of Hayward from the East Coast as at midnight last night.
No significant safety issues to report.
Our SunGold harvest has continued well but volumes are behind the Zespri shipping and demand plan as fruit is later to mature than expected. Zespri have been increasing the early incentives to encourage Growers to harvest, however the incidence of only some sizes clearing and the difficulty in select picking means growers are typically waiting for all fruit through to size 39 to clear, before they pick.
We have had some tremendous SunGold lines through the sheds. And the excellent lines of low reject that were handled at Oakside on Thursday night as the teams pushed up the midnight close were appreciated. It also meant that we were able to pack more of the late arrival fruit in canopy than we might have otherwise expected. Thank you.
There is an issue with stalks this year in the G3 harvest and particularly the stalks that are breaking ¼ of a centimetre up from the base of the fruit and it is presenting challenges at the sheds. The stalks present a puncture risk. Growers and contractors are asked to be vigilant in the picking process and we are focussing our field auditing to remove as much of it as possible.
Zespri had added a $0.30 per tray premium to the GACK rates and this premium is for fruit packed by midnight Thursday night. The normal week 13/14 kiwistart rate runs out on midnight Sunday [for this week only]. There is expected to be an additional premium for next week.
For GAOB, the week 13/14 rate cuts off on Thursday midnight and there is no $0.30 cent premium.
To the numbers [to midnight last night]
|
G3 SunGold |
|
|
Seeka Packed Trays 975,670 |
Industry Packed Trays 5,758,477 [16.9%] |
|
Seeka Avg size 28.68 |
Industry avg size 28.97 |
|
Trays loaded 463,444 |
Trays in store 512,226 |
|
Trays On order 861,116
|
[we will need to get on with the packing!] |
|
G3 SunGold organic |
|
|
Seeka Packed Trays 37,351 |
Industry Packed Trays 44,289 [84%] |
|
Avg size 27.07 |
Industry avg size 27.4 |
|
Trays loaded 0 |
Trays in store 37,351 |
|
Trays On order 0 |
|
|
Hayward |
|
|
Seeka Packed Trays 40,445 |
Industry Packed Trays 40,445 [100%] |
|
Avg size 34.83 |
Industry avg size 34.83 |
|
Trays loaded 0 |
Trays in store 40,445 |
|
Trays On order 40,445 |
|
Capacity – the delay in Hayward maturity has resulted in us falling behind where we had planned to be for the season by 1m trays. However that in itself isn’t a problem and we have a lot of packing and coolstore capacity that should enable Seeka to catch up over the next 14 days with the Hayward expected with forecast colder nights on the way.
Happy and safe harvesting.
Regards
Michael
