The New Zealand fruit-picker recruitment website www.picknz.co.nz has been generating 70 employment enquiries a day, according to the Hawkes Bay Fruitgrowers Association. And 90 per cent of the interested parties are New Zealanders: about twice the usual level. Harvesting in Hawkes Bay will begin in earnest in about 10 days but the Otago and Nelson districts are facing a picker shortage. In the Nelson region hundreds of foreign backpackers will be given fast-track work permits to fill apple-picking gaps. Nelson needs 5,000 workers to gather its crop in compared to 17,000 needed in Hawke's Bay.
The fruitgrowers' association is holding four training sessions to teach growers to use its website taking them through updating their own details on the website and answering replies to their job advertisements.
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