Welcome to our week 40 update. The Industry loaded the last European vessel late last week and it sailed over the weekend. It was a huge effort with the final three Europe bound vessels sailing in the last 2 weeks. The crews have had to work hard to get the fruit into specification with many facilities across the Industry struggling to achieve the quality threshold at the Export Consignment Product Inspection [ECPI]; and therefore being prevented from loading fruit until their processes were corrected to prohibit out of specification fruit from being loaded. Hayward conventional fruit quality has got a little more challenging although really, onshore fruit loss at 1.10% or thereabouts at week 40 is a very good result.
In Seeka’s case, we opened our last controlled atmosphere stores [CA] in the last two weeks, lowering the need to check or rework as much packed fruit. As a result our teams were able to pick up some opportunities to ship fruit where other suppliers couldn’t fulfil their share. Our average coolstore losses from CA totalled 1% and considering the lateness of opening some stores, it has been a tremendous result and demonstrates the value of CA to the Industry.
Seeka loaded 1.7m trays for shipping in the last two weeks, some 295,000 trays higher than our Industry share. As a result our instore inventory now totals 1.774m trays with 507,000 on order in the next two weeks.
In the case of our Hayward organic fruit – the program is nearly done. Fruit loss is 0.94%, slightly higher than Industry average reflecting a lighter share of Kiwistart. Our time related earnings at $0.27 per submit tray or $0.38 per time pool tray is good. We are down to 19,342 trays in store with 11,913 trays scheduled for shipping in the next two weeks.
Some Hayward conventional statistics
I have had a number of growers contact me about where we are up to with the hayward conventional selling season as a result of lower returns and the uncertainty around Hayward sales and forecasts. Accordingly, I thought it useful to update you on progress to date. I was in the markets last week, the feedback from our customers was the fruit was good, but sales had suffered primarily from the late start. Good momentum now but we are not out of the woods yet.
I provide you with both the Zespri per tray and per hectare returns making the point to you that growers who produced the same production year on year are facing an 18% reduction in orchard gate returns.
And to the numbers at midnight Sunday end of week 40 [09/10/2016]
Ladies
Please note that there are a few tickets left for the ladies trip on Sunday (16 October) to “Priscilla Queen of the Desert”. If you would like to go please contact stephaniek@seeka.co.nz or ring the office - please be quick the seats are filling fast.
Thanks and kind regards
Michael
Seeka Key
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