John Burke says he is leaving the kiwifruit industry in good hands as he steps back from his general manager role with Kiwifruit Vine Health Incorporated.

Since Psa was first identified on a kiwifruit orchard in November 2010, John has headed the industry response; helping to establish and run KVH.

KVH general manager John Bourke.

'I'm not pulling out for stress,” says John.

'When I took on the job it was for a year's contract.

'My brief was to take it through to a certain stage and I've done that.

'It's sort of been more like a project manager role, getting everything up and running and putting in place all the foundations; building blocks for how we want to run things going forward.

'It's been a highly stressful job, but it's also been very challenging and rewarding.”

John says KVH has done a huge amount of work in the last 12 months and for him it is a matter of handing things over at the right time.

'We've done a heck of a lot of work in setting up KVH and all the operational aspects of dealing with Psa and integrating that into the industry.

'It's been a total team effort, both by KVH and the industry to get things up and running and things are up and running really well now.”

A new general manger is planned to be appointed in the new year with John carrying on his duties in the interim.

He will continue to be involved in the financial advocacy side of KVH.

'I've been involved in looking at the recovery pathways for growers and the industry and I'll carry on doing that in the interim and then bringing in a new person to take over the running of the core operational of KVH.

'Tied into that is doing the impact analysis report, which is due out in February.

'There will be a bit of ongoing work around that so I'll be focusing on that.”

The impact analysis report includes potential recovery pathways and examining whether or not that recovery pathway can be assisted and what the cost benefit of that will be.

John says KVH's future role will be around biosecurity, not just dealing with Psa, but all the pests and disease risk to the kiwifruit industry.

'I think with the lessons we've learnt around the incursion and how to manage it, I think we owe it upon ourselves and the rest of the primary sectors of New Zealand to lead the way in terms of our relationships with MAF biosecurity and how we manager our border controls and are prepared for incursions.”

John says the kiwifruit industry needs to embrace a general industry agreement with MAF.

'We feel, as a living case study – that could serve as an example for other primary sectors (to set up a GIA).

'Our country is so exposed and so reliant on our primary sector, it's important we make that work really well.”

John says one of the more rewarding aspects of his job has been seeing the cohesiveness of the industry in action.

'KVH is not a big organisation, it's very small, and what we've achieved in the last 12 months is pretty substantial, but it's been done through a cohesive industry effort.

'So that's what's rewarding for me, it's seeing everyone come together and put their shoulders to the grindstone when they've needed to.

'KVH, we've got a great little team here, who have been working in really stressful circumstances, but a lot of it's been facilitation and harnessing the strength and resources from within, right across our industry; that's with growers, post harvesters and with Zespri.”

John says the role of the next general manager will be more operational than set up – but they are taking the challenge on at a good time.
'We are now starting to see a recovery pathway.

'What we've been dealing with for 12 months is a whole lot of unknowns; and the needing to deal with a whole lot of questions.

'We're just starting to gather momentum where we are answering some questions, we can see a potential recovery pathway and– we've still got some bridges to cross – but if we can cross those bridges we're going to be back on track within the next two or three years hopefully.”