Information from the public is being sought to help bring a criminal prosecution over the alleged provision of bud wood from Zespri's new varieties to growers in China.

Zespri chief operating officer Simon Limmer confirms that Zespri has already taken steps against the grower who allegedly provided the bud wood to China.

'This includes terminating their licence, dropping their SunGold fruit and removing all SunGold plant material from their orchard. We accepted the grower's green fruit this season.”

Police have not charged anyone in relation to the case.

The office in charge, Detective Senior Sergeant Greg Turner says police are not currently investigating the matter, but it remains an open investigation.

'Should there be any person in the community with information about this matter, Police encourage them to provide that information to advance this investigation.

'The investigation identified a suspect living in New Zealand who was licensed to grow the protected variety. As previously reported by Zespri, a licensed grower within New Zealand has had their rights to grow that variety withdrawn.”

Simon says; ‘If anyone has any information about this case, we ask them to contact the New Zealand Police'.

'The action we're taking against the grower relates to both breaches of our licence agreement for SunGold and breaches of our rights under the Plant Variety Rights Act.

'These civil claims will go through the court system and are independent of the New Zealand Police criminal investigation,” he says.

Last year Zespri received information that its gold kiwifruit varieties Gold3 (Zespri SunGold) and Gold9 (Zespri Charm) may be growing illegally in China and immediately began an extensive due diligence process.

The reports were confirmed late last year, and Zespri contacted New Zealand police regarding a possible breach of Zespri's plant variety rights.

Greg says police investigated this matter as an "obtaining by deception" incident, which is a fraud offence.

The allegation was that a licensed grower in New Zealand obtained payment by falsely representing that they had the authority to sell rights to grow the protected varieties.

No member of the New Zealand Police visited China during the course of this investigation. There was liaison between New Zealand Police staff stationed in China and other Government agencies

'Zespri maintains excellent networks and relationships across the world. As a result, Zespri became aware of the matter and the identity of the suspect.”

Greg says police will not be commenting on how the bud wood may have got to China.

Simonsays Zespri will not make any details about the grower public but; 'want to send a clear message that we will vigorously protect our IP for growers in New Zealand and offshore”.

'We're continuing to work collaboratively with authorities in China to determine our options with support of New Zealand government.

'We are investigating whether there are other plantings in China and while we are limited by what we can say without prejudicing these investigations, our work to date shows this is not of significant scale.

'We're not releasing details about the illegal planting sites at this stage and the investigations into how the bud wood was transported to China are ongoing.”

Zespri has its own trial sites to grow kiwifruit in Shaanxi Province China, and is establishing a kiwifruit "centre of excellence" there. Shaanxi produces between 40 to50 per cent of China's total kiwifruit production.

Simon says it is important to note that; 'without running these growing trials in China, it's highly unlikely Zespri would have found out about the PVR breach in the first place, as we now have strong working relationships across the China kiwifruit industry”.