Zespri is under pressure this season as the appreciation of the New Zealand dollar takes its toll on grower returns and market pressure builds.
Chairman Craig Greenlees told shareholders at last week’s agm that the company is doing all it can to negate the impact of the exchange rate situation. “In March we indicated that the adverse exchange rate would have an impact on growers returns by about NZ$0.60 (£0.23) for green and NZ$1 for Gold and organic,” said Greenlees.
“Since then the exchange rate further deteriorated and then improved resulting in a similar net effect.”
However he admitted that for the bulk of the crop - green kiwifruit - it is still too early in the marketing period to tell whether or not Zespri will be able to recover a reasonable proportion of the negative exchange rate effect.
“Although green sales have started well, we have more green trays to sell and consume at this time than at the same time last year. This is down to a later start in Europe and a much greater green crop,” said Greenlees. “This is significant, considering the record volume of fruit last year.”
By mid-July, Zespri’s sales were 10 per cent behind 2004, due to the later start, and Gold sales were nine per cent behind, while organic kiwifruit volumes were 19 per cent ahead.
Greenlees also highlighted a difficult European fruit market with oversupply of apples, soft fruit and stone fruit as well as rock-bottom prices for bananas all making the going tough for kiwifruit from New Zealand.
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