Licenses to grow gold and red kiwifruit have reached record highs this year - signalling strong confidence in the industry.
The median price for gold was $550,000 per hectare, up from $400,000 last year. File image
Photo: 123rf
Each year, Zespri releases licenses to grow the fruit, which growers then bid on.
This year 700ha were released for the gold variety - 50ha for organic gold kiwifruit and 350ha for the new red kiwifruit.
The median price for gold was $550,000 per hectare, up from $400,000 last year.
For the new red variety, the median price was nearly $75,000, up by more than $10,000 on last year.
Your playlist will load after this ad Fruit stickers have been around for decades but end up adding to NZ’s landfill problem. Source: Fair Go
Does anyone have any idea what the four-digit number on the sticker means? Do we care that our bananas come from Ecuador, or do we pay attention to the variety of our apples?
That is exactly the kind of information these sticky labels provide. But if consumers don t need this information, why do we still have fruit stickers on our fruit?
Fruit stickers have been around for decades, and they re usually made of plastic or polyethylene, which means they can t be recycled or home composted so they end up adding to our landfill problem.
Fair Go: Why do the fruit we buy in shops still have stickers? tvnz.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from tvnz.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Zespri considers putting sticker on counterfeit SunGold fruit
As the ‘single desk marketer’, Zespri owns the rights to SunGold, which means all growers must sell their fruit to the company for marketing and export. The SunGold variety is now being sold in more than 54 countries.
However, rogue Chinese growers are already producing around $1 billion worth of SunGold fruits without permission. Some sources say this means that Zespri has not only lost the intellectual property, but it has also lost control of the variety in China, with the growth in the illicit fruit threatening Zespri s stake in its largest market.
Zespri lost the IP after a couple stole the plant material in New Zealand and took it back to China. The High Court here awarded almost $15 million in damages to Zespri, but the decision is being appealed. Meanwhile, at least 5,500 hectares of SunGold is now planted illegally in China, just short of the 6,500 hectares planted in New Zealand.
Growers here say Zespri has not only lost the intellectual property, it has lost control of the variety in China, with the growth in the illicit fruit threatening Zespri s stake in its largest market. Zespri s solution is to put its sticker on the counterfeit fruit in a controlled commercial trial, giving technology and advice to the Chinese growers who are producing the illicit fruit. SunGold growers in New Zealand will vote on the plan in June and some aren t happy about it. Today
The Detail explores the SunGold saga with journalist Richard Rennie, who writes for Farmers Weekly and other agri business publications.