New Zealand kiwifruit marketer Zespri will farewell its first shipment for the season to Japan this weekend, with 1,450 pallets of the fruit heading to the market several days ahead of schedule.
The shipment will contain around 195,000 trays of Zespri Green kiwifruit and 180,000 trays of Gold, and it set to arrive in Kobe on 9 April in the ship the Asian Lily.
Japan is continuing as one of the best of New Zealand’s kiwifruit export markets, and Zespri’s director of Corporate and Grower Services, Carol Ward, said the marketing season there was looking positive.
“Consumer demand for top quality Zespri Green, Gold and Organic kiwifruit is very high,” she said in a statement. “Japan is a strong market for Zespri due both to the large volumes we export there – 17 per cent of Zespri’s total global export - and the positive yen/New Zealand dollar exchange rate.”
Zespri’s marketing efforts in Japan this year will focus on health aspects, a strategy that has shown significant success in the country in recent years.
“Our key message for Japanese consumers this season is positioning kiwifruit as ‘the fruit that refines your body’, making you healthy and beautiful,” explained Toshiyuki Suda, Zespri’s marketing manager for Japan.
“We are reinforcing this message through two new television commercials, one for Zespri Green and another for Zespri Gold liwifruit, and continued in-store promotion and tastings.”
The new kiwifruit season from New Zealand is looking like a mirror image of last year’s production, according to Zespri’s CEO Lain Jager. Expected growth was cut short by poor pollination.
“We’re expecting a crop similar in volume to last season across all categories,” he told Fruitnet.com. “After a hot summer fruit sugar levels are looking good so are we anticipating a good taste year.”
“The anticipated growth in crop volume this season is lower than we had hoped for due to some poor pollination in our main growing areas. This is a seasonal issue and we expect a jump in volume for the 2011 season, particularly for Gold.”
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