Pipfruit New Zealand’s new directors Cameron Taylor and Bruce Beaton, and Peter Beaven, who was re-elected for another term, said NZ grows the best apples and pears in the world, and over the next five seasons will grow hundreds of great jobs offering promising futures and career opportunities.
Now ahead of forecast to becoming a billion dollar export business by 2020, production will increase by 30% in five years and the industry will need 4000 permanent and seasonal jobs to harvest, market and export the crop to more than 70 international markets.
“But we can’t get there on our own.
“To achieve our record-breaking potential we must help attract and develop a skilled labour force and grow capability and skills both within the current, and future workforce,” Beaton said.
Pipfruit NZ was undertaking a major work project which includes an interactive tool to identify and track all the new jobs available, along with the qualifications, skills and experience required to match them.
Taylor said it was critical to engage and find new ways to encourage young minds to start thinking about the wide range of jobs on offer to climb the career ladder.
“Enter our industry and you can go places – that’s the message we want to send out to encourage, inspire and see more people succeed,” he said.
Beaven said four back-to-back years of making money had allowed growers to reduce debt and reinvest which has seen huge development, expansion and annual planting of more than a million new trees.
The industry had evolved and matured into a fully integrated business structure that has seen real collaboration and better communication, while remaining fiercely competitive, Beaton said.
“While the industry has gone through significant turmoil and change to achieve this, we are now far stronger and as a country we are in better shape than any of our competitors,” he said.
