Commitments for more than $100 million spending on 1000ha-plus of the region’s best soils and water availability have been announced in recent times and in many cases planting is under way.
The two latest announcements are $38m for land and kiwifruit development by Craigmore Sustainables on a Kerikeri site coming out of dairy farming and a $2.37m loan from the Provincial Growth Fund for hydroponic berry production at Maungatapere, near Whangarei.
The award-winning Malley family will create a centre of excellence for hydroponic horticulture to train skilled managers and operators on the high-technology platform (see accompanying story).
Avocado NZ chief executive Jen Scoular said more than 1000ha of new avocado orchards has been planted over the past three years in the Far North, Mid North around Whangarei and Kaikohe and at Tapora on the Kaipara Harbour northwest of Auckland.
When established and producing that land will provide a 25% increase in the national productive avocado canopy and help fulfill the industry’s goal of doubling avocado sales to $280m by 2023.
Confidence in the future is demonstrated not only by the new ground being planted but also more intensive spacings, sales of clonal seedlings from nurseries and the offshore advice being sought from Australia and Latin America, she said.
Investors in Northland are corporates like Seeka, King (Valic NZ) and MyFarm, syndicates and family groups of new and existing growers.
The extensive Kaipara plantings on the Tapora peninsula are led by well-known industry people like mandarin grower Tony Gibbs, capsicum grower Hamish Alexander, forestry investor Glen Inger and Fresh Food exporter John Greensmith.
As in the Bay of Plenty, Maori land-owners are taking considerable interest in the horticultural prospects for suitable land and the long-term sustainability and employment opportunities, she said.
Industry projections are that new plantings will continue at a similar pace in the future and avocados will earn $1 billion a year by 2040.
Bayleys Northland horticulture representative Vinne Bhula said a recent tender for the 30ha Paparore orchard north of Kaitaia was won by two young brothers from Tauranga who are existing growers.
The undisclosed bidders bought 5000 intensively spaced clonal trees planted last summer on a fully irrigated, sheltered, redeveloped orchard from which 30-year trees had been removed and the compacted sandstone pan broken up.
Earlier in the year a 20ha orchard with 20-year-old trees owned by industry stalwart John Weissing on Whatatiri Mountain sold for $4m.
Bhula said any land available in the Maungatapere Water Company irrigation area is now keenly sought for avocados or kiwifruit.
Valic NZ, an overseas investment vehicle that bought NZ’s largest avocado business, King Orchard, in 2015 is also establishing gold kiwifruit at Whatatiri.
It recently began taking out old avocados and replacing them with gold kiwifruit because of the excellent market prospects for Zespri SunGold, Valic director Alistair Nicholson said.
That is not a lack of confidence in avocados but recognises the suitability of that site for kiwifruit rather than avocado replanting.
King now has 100,000 trees in the Far North, 75% of them Hass variety and the rest Reed, though recent disappointment with Reed prompted some replanting and regrafting to Hass, he said.
Nicholson, who is the Far North director on the NZ Avocado board, said orchard owners in the north are a similar cross-section to those found elsewhere but there is scope for larger contiguous blocks.
More and more new plantings are intensive, with or without clonal root stocks, which offer better resistance against phytophthora, the root rot also causing kauri dieback.
Scoular said the avocado industry sits well alongside the kiwifruit sector, sharing packing and infrastructure facilities while kiwifruit workers can move to avocados as the season changes.
Northland’s horticultural developments over recent years have been heavily weighted towards avocados rather than kiwifruit.
However, there has been a recent surge in gold kiwifruit through grafting onto cut-over Hayward Green vines and in new developments.
Two notable Whangarei plantings under way involve tree removal and replacement with kiwifruit canopies.
At Maungatapere mature avocados are being removed and at Glenbervie the former Huanui mixed fruit tree orchard is being converted to kiwifruit.
Both have irrigation, from the community water scheme at Maungatapere and from groundwater bores at Glenbervie.
Green kiwifruit yields in Northland have consistently been below those obtained in Bay of Plenty and the cloud over the continued use of Hi-Cane (hydrogen cyanamide) to boost flowering, bud break and fruit yield has been heavier in the north.
Regular cut-over conversion of green to gold has been under way in the north for years, such that this year’s harvest volume was about 75% gold.
Northland produces less than 5% of the national kiwifruit crop but that will increase steadily when new entrant Craigmore Sustainables plants up to half of 137ha of dairy land near Kerikeri Airport.
The $38m investment will increase Bay of Islands kiwifruit production by more than a third and create 29 full-time equivalent jobs.
However, the results of the 2019 SunGold licence tender showed how long the full Craigmore orchard development might take.
The results of the latest SunGold licence tender process showed Northland secured 8ha, with 6ha destined for cut-over, at an average price for successful bids of $290,000/ha.
Further Northland applications covering 16ha were unsuccessful, 11ha of that planned new development.
Ngati Hine Forestry Trust now owns five kiwifruit orchards in the north as diversification from its main forestry business.
It works with Seeka, the Bay of Plenty-based industry leader that rebuilt and opened a new $20m pack house at Waipapa in time for this year’s kiwifruit pack.
That facility will also handle avocados, citrus and berry fruit.
Last year Seeka paid $40m for the Kerikeri holdings of T&G Horticulture and is rejuvenating and selling the nine orchards with a total area of 288ha.
Agreements worth about $30m have been made, with a further $20m expected to be confirmed by the end of the year.
