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THREE COLOURS OF KIWIFRUIT IN RIWAKA
Tasman was on track for a stellar kiwifruit harvest until one late frost and then in late December hail took the cream off the top, but most growers are still pretty happy about the end result.
By Anne Hardie
Jared and Selena Fry grow three colours of kiwifruit near Riwaka as part of their diversified horticulture business. Over 70ha spread around different blocks, the intergenerational business grows apples, hops and kiwifruit, including 4ha of Zespri RubyRed™.
The latter is a work in progress, but Jared has high hopes for the variety, especially in Nelson’s warm summers with little wind. This was their first season exporting the red kiwifruit, with variable production on some blocks, not helped by hail, and he expects it will take a couple more years for it to get fully established.
“It’s a fruit that very easily marks and has sizing challenges, but I think we will overcome them. It will take a number of years to really learn about it and fine tune things. There’s a lot of support from Zespri and other industry bodies to assist us grow the red better and it will evolve over time. The market wants a big red, so we have to meet market demands.”
Whatever the solution, Jared is confident the variety will become more viable and potentially profitable. The red variety was first off the block at harvest in the orchard, with the first fruit picked on March 10, followed by the SunGold™ harvest kicking in during the last week of March and finishing with green from the first week of April.
Packouts have been good for the gold and green kiwifruit, despite the hail. While frosts caused substantial damage on some growers’ blocks in September and October at the pre-flowering stage, the Frys’ blocks escaped damage to their crops.
Between the packhouse and orchard, the business employs about 100 staff at the peak of the season
“But the hail event affected quite a number of kiwifruit blocks in the district and one of our blocks by the Motueka River was hit substantially hard. Without the frost and hail events, it would have been a solid season for the district and potentially record volumes.
“The Hayward variety has had yields well above the industry average and we’ve had solid yields for gold when unaffected by frosts.”
While Hayward has achieved good growing results this year, Jared says the orchard is still replacing vines over the course of time with the more profitable gold. Green will always stay in the mix though, for more diversity.
“It’s been one of our key drivers since my father’s day; to have multiple crops and it’s worked reasonably well. We’ve got several blocks in several areas, which gives us geographical diversity as well.”
The downside of multiple crops, he says, is no downtime during the year. Added into the mix is the packhouse which Jared says is considered small these days, but still packs for several other growers.
Between the packhouse and orchard, the business employs about 100 staff at the peak of the season, including locals, Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) workers from Fiji and backpackers. Jared says it’s a big relief in post-Covid-19 days to have a good source of staff now.
So far, he says the business has spent very little on robotics, but that could potentially change in the future, especially as their son, Keaton, has joined the team as the fourth generation of the Fry family to work in the business.
At Mainland Kiwifruit Growers Entity, business and supply chain manager, Luke McKay, says the late spring frosts and hail reduced the region’s crop by 10 percent on what would have been “a stellar crop”.
But the quality has been great and the end result is about 4.5 million trays of fruit with 3.3 million of those trays gold. The first of the region’s red fruit were exported this year and though only 25,000 trays, he says it’s a start.
By mid-May, there was no sign of early frosts to tarnish the tail-end of the harvest. While autumn was holding on well, Luke says there had been a few rain events through harvest which had caused some disruption for growers trying to get fruit off the vines and also a few vessels waiting to get into port. Overall though, he says the season was working out well.