The marketer’s updated and revised five-year plan had expanded this year with a 47-page analysis offering industry players a snapshot of prospects, threats and opportunities ahead.
One outcome of Psa had been to tighten up orchard biosecurity and management in the past five years.
With that came an exceptional increase in Green variety productivity that had kept pressure on marketers to maintain value amid higher volumes than expected.
In 2010-11 volumes appeared to be evening out at about 73 million trays but a leap in orchard productivity led to a significant increase in supply to more than 80m trays for 2015-16.
That prompted Zespri to increase its efforts to develop some Green markets more rapidly, putting stronger focus on early Green sales, rebalancing fruit portfolios offered to retailers and pushing the certified gut health claim held by kiwifruit harder to consumers.
Zespri picked the greatest threat to NZ Green coming from Chinese grown fruit at the beginning and end of the season as that country’s ability to grow quality crops improved.
Taste standards had also undergone a revamp to more closely fit with desired consumer taste profiles.
Per tray returns were expected to range between $4.80 and $5.80 a tray for 2016-17 but higher crop yields had also put more downside risk on that estimate.
A near doubling of the SunGold variety from 32m trays in 2015 to more than 60m by 2020 meant pressure would be on Zespri to maintain its stated goal of a 20%-40% price premium relative to Green.
A high level of per-tray market spend was expected over the next two years, increasing consumer awareness and market penetration.
For their part, growers would be expected to deliver optimised taste profiles through higher drymatter fruit.
The report acknowledged SunGold was still a relatively new fruit variety, with much being learnt about its early supply, optimal conditioning requirements and storage and pressure was on to learn quickly.
Orchard gate returns were forecast to remain strong, well over $100,000/hectare and with costs of about $40,000 a hectare, margins were looking good for growers over the coming six years. Per-tray returns were estimated at $7.70 to $9.
As Zespri tried meet all-year supply demands from customers, the report highlighted some risks to non-NZ supply sources.
They included an extremely competitive northern hemisphere sales window with Greek, Italian and French kiwifruit already well established on shelves.
The surge in SunGold volumes over the coming years into a mature European market would require an emphasis on migrating customers to 12-month supply contracts.
Meantime, Asian demand meant China provided an enormous opportunity for Zespri to fill the market with premium Zespri product for 12 months of the year. Sourcing supply from within China was identified as an important potential development.
