Pacific Islands labour in New Zealand is proving a bigger factor than even an improved new variety profile in helping growers deliver high-quality fruit to market, the country’s top-fruit industry body has said.
Gary Jones, Pipfruit NZ’s manager of membership services, said: “At the moment, New Zealand apples are taking the place of other southern hemisphere apples in our markets offshore because the quality is higher. We have more than 4,000 experienced harvesters from the Pacific Islands and that has made the difference.
“We have one of the best-quality crops we have ever had, but Pacific Islands labour has fundamentally changed our ability to deliver quality to the market. It is bigger even than changing varieties - being able to pick the crop at the exact right time in terms of fruit maturity is a huge, fundamental change.”
There are more than 4,000 Pacific Islanders working in the New Zealand top-fruit industry this season, with nearly 3,000 employed in the principal growing region of Hawkes Bay alone.
Jones is very clear about the massive impact the guest workers have had on the sector this year. He said: “We would have had a disaster with the apple harvest this year if we hadn’t had the opportunity to employ the Pacific Islanders. They come for six to seven months of the year, working not just the apple harvest, but then grapes and kiwifruit. They are effectively permanent, seasonal workers, with many returning three to four years running, who are now very experienced.”
This season, New Zealand is enjoying a particularly large crop and with newly bearing trees in restructured, intensively planted orchards coming on all at once, a highly organised harvesting operation is absolutely key to success.
As a relatively high-cost production country, New Zealand’s growers have been moving away from standard Royal Gala and Braeburn production in recent years to diversify their plantings into more premium varieties. This move has been felt especially keenly this season.
Jones said: “This season has been very tight in maturity and it has taken a lot of workers. We have slightly more fruit than in previous years but the newer varieties are also quite tight in terms of their optimum maturity picking window.”
He admitted that most growers were looking “for a few more workers”, but stressed that the industry was “coping” and describing the situation as a shortage was not accurate. Some reports have suggested that working holiday scheme numbers are down, but Jones indicated that, whereas fewer back-packers might be required in the hospitality and catering trades, there are still good numbers heading to work in New Zealand’s orchards and fields.
But even with unemployment in New Zealand at a high level, it is still relatively difficult to attract home-grown labour into the agricultural and horticultural workforce.
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