Kiwifruit marketer Zespri is keen for growers to harvest this season’s bounty as early as possible as it gears up to sell an expected record 190 million trays of fruit to the world.

The grower-owned exporter said it was focused on starting the season strongly and incentivising growers to be quick off the harvest mark to get sales programmes under way.

“It’s important that with a big crop we start our season strongly and deliver a good amount of early-season fruit to our customers so that we can capitalise on early sales opportunities,” said chief executive Dan Mathieson.

Zespri, which is enabled by regulation to export all New Zealand kiwifruit, except to Australia, has released its first payment guidance to growers for the new 2024-25 season, showing stronger per-hectare returns.

The bottom of the per-hectare guidance range for all kiwifruit categories, other than the sweet green variety, is above the final forecast given at the end of last season.

The bumper crop follows a horror two years for the industry in which fruit quality and yields suffered after extreme weather events and due to a Covid labour shortage and supply chain issues hangover.

“The last couple of years have been particularly challenging growing seasons and it’s really positive that we’ve had better conditions this year,” Mathieson said.

“Yields are up and that’s expected to contribute to per-hectare returns lifting considerably from last season which will be positive news for growers.”

However, he warned that downside risks covered in the new returns guidance included more challenging market conditions and the impact of unfavourable foreign exchange movements with the Japanese yen. Japan is a major market for Zespri.

The exchange rate was expected to particularly impact organic, sweet green and RubyRed categories, which had a higher proportion of sales in Japan, said Mathieson, who leaves the company at the end of the season for a new role in a major US berry company.

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Sales programmes for the recently commercialised RubyRed variety were under way in Japan, Mathieson said.

“It’s a great way for us to start given the variety generates real excitement, particularly amongst our younger consumers, and given the fruit is only available for a limited time.”

The season had started slightly slower than expected due to fruit maturity, but the harvest was starting to build, he said. About 15 million trays had been submitted for exporting so far, and numbers were expected to increase rapidly.

Zespri was ramping up market activity so that when kiwifruit landed in overseas markets, the company was able to sell it quickly to capitalise on strong demand, he said.

“This is particularly important given the 2023-24 season’s earlier finish, driven by lower volumes and the constrained Northern Hemisphere supply, which prevented us from providing continuity to our retail partners.”

The orchard gate return guidance range per hectare for Zespri green in the 2024-25 season is $75,000-$91,000. This compares with last season’s February forecast of $64,930 per hectare.

Guidance for bestseller Zespri SunGold is $145,000-$166,000 per hectare, compared with $143,537 forecast in February last season.

For RubyRed growers, per-hectare return range guidance is $50,000-$56,000 compared with $41,057 last season.