The last two seasons have been among the most stressful in recent years for the kiwifruit industry but despite the impacts of the disease Psa on vines, fruit quality has been good, according to post harvest operators.

Mount Pack and Cool

- Odette Chesterman
Grower Services Representative.

The 2012 kiwifruit season has gone well for both MPAC and our growers. Our orchard gate returns (OGRs) will be above industry average and yields (trays per hectare) well above industry average.

The quality of fruit was outstanding and resulted in excellent pack out levels and low reject rates. The reject rates for green and Hort 16A were the lowest since the company's inception in 2009 and the green crop was a count size larger than industry average. Both the company and the industry, as a whole, experienced low levels of fruit loss.
The 2012 harvest started slightly later and we completed picking by June 11. Early maturity of green and Hort 16A was slow making supplying Zespri's early vessels, a challenge for the whole industry. MPAC harvested more than its market share of early green and Hort 16A crops.

Our core seasonal staff are New Zealanders supplemented by backpackers.

The majority of our growers are reporting good flower numbers, and a favorable pollination period, which bodes well for the coming season. Growers who have converted to new varieties (including recovery grafting from Hort 16A) are increasingly optimistic about the way their plants are performing. The forecasted dry summer should suppress the Psa risk.

MPAC has provided significant support to growers in relation to Psa including technical information, knowledge and the tools to wage the war against Psa. Our growers have received several rounds of Psa monitoring at the company's expense. We have held regular meeting for growers to share their knowledge and experience with us and each other. Our technical bulletin, regular field days and demonstration orchard have played an important role in getting the latest information out to growers.

Bio security measures have continually evolved and the company, our orchard management partner 'Groplus” and growers all continue to insist on the constant implementation of 'industry best practice” hygiene standards.

Aongatete Coolstores Ltd

- Nell Dawson Operations Manger

2012 has generally been a good season for packing kiwifruit especially with fruit quality on and offshore. Fruit loss has been at its lowest for many years. The volumes we packed this year were up and we weren't affected by Psa significantly.

The new varieties packed out well although some required different curing and storage depending on their maturity. Our Near Infra-Red Technology (NIR) was very helpful particularly with the gold G9 variety.
Harvest went smoothly eand we had a consistent flow of fruit from Kiwistart until completion. We used bin cleaning equipment, added an automatic truck spraying machine and kept up stringent hygiene requirements under a KVH approved system to reduce the risk of Psa infection and control infection.

Most of our staff were recruited locally with many staying on to pack controlled atmosphere fruit. We were especially pleased to have several of our growers on the team and they made a great contribution in many key roles. The rest of the staff was made up of RSEs (mainly in the picking and pruning teams) and some back packers worked on night shifts.

Psa will certainly have an impact on volumes in our next season with Gold (16A) especially starting to be affected in the Katikati area. It is very stress full for growers. People are very concerned about their ongoing livelihoods. Aongatete has placed special emphasis and investment to support growers as much as we can. We have invested in our technical support to give the best advice and support for all our growers. Additionally we have; monitoring and cut-out teams; a fortnightly drop-in session which is well attended; and support and encourage as many people as possible to attend meetings. We arrange occasional social outing to offer growers a break. It is essential at this time for our community to come together and support each other.
Aongatete is looking forward to helping growers learn new techniques and methods to maximise their crops and protect them as much as possible in our new growing environment.

Birchwood Packhouse

- Karen Roche, general manager.

Our packouts were reduced, but not through Psa, more from the November winds that ripped through Katikati and decimated many green orchards. No crop was lost through Psa in 2012 bit it will be a different story in 2013. Of the crop picked pack-outs were excellent with very low reject rates. Dry matter was a vast improvement on 2011. Storage quality has been excellent – low fruit loss and excellent reports from off-shore

We only packed the new gold varieties G3 and G9. Both were wonderful to pack and just flowed through the shed. They need a lot more care in the cool store and we had to do a lot of conditioning to ensure that they coloured. However, we have been very pleased with the results and have learnt a lot in our first year of packing newly commercialised varieties.

This harvest season flowed very well and any wet weather didn't impact dramatically on our harvest.

Most of our staff are motor homers who return year after year and then they bring their friends, and so our ‘family” grows. We have a small percentage of backpackers and the rest of our staff are locals.
Just what next harvest brings is the big unknown at this point and I would just love to own a crystal ball. We are expecting a drop in gold volumes – unsure how much of a drop but it could be 30 to 50 per cent or perhaps more. Fortunately, the orchards are looking to be carrying excellent numbers at this stage, so at least many growers are starting from a high base. In green there will probably be negligible losses due to Psa.

We have been holding fortnightly grower discussion groups all through winter and now that it is summer, the growers are really enjoying getting back out into the orchards. We have monitoring teams available and all our grower services staff are constantly calling in on growers to check on how they are doing

When if come to biosecurity measures we are following the usual strict orchard hygiene protocols including using the sanitising truck/vehicle wash at the packhouse which was installed prior to 2012 harvest. Our bin tip has a sanitising booth which sprays stacks of empty bins ready for the field again.

EastPack
- Matt Hill - General Manager - Grower Services, Orchard Management and Leasing.

Kiwifruit volumes at EastPack have not decreased this season, thanks to 55 new orchards, most from the Western Bay of Plenty, representing 2.4 million trays packing with the company which has a reputation for low packing costs and high grower OGR.

The quality of this season's fruit has been very good with a reject rate below 10 per cent. EastPack research shows Psa causes little or no impact on storage and fruit has indeed stored well.

EastPack packed 700,000 trays of new varieties. There were no problems with the gold G3 and the sweet green G14 but the gold G9 did have maturity issues.

Eastern Bay fruit was late maturing but with careful management across the company's three regions, harvesting extended only an extra day on 2011.

EastPack's October payment forecast is $4.56 per tray and we have already announced a base packing price for 2013 of $1.11 which includes a 20c rebate to growers. EastPack expects to pay a dividend early next year to the growers who hold Investor shares.

There were no recruiting problems with experienced staff, both from New Zealand and Vanuatu returning as in previous years.
We hold regular `Psa breakfasts' where members of our technical transfer team bring orchardists up to date with the latest information about managing the disease.

There have been some promising results coming out of Opotiki and Tauranga. EastPack Hort16A orchards which have been infected with Psa for more than 12 months should carry a crop into 2013. Grower road shows have visited those and other orchards to learn about the techniques being used.

The answers to Psa are not just one thing and there's no magic bullet but it's about attention to detail, regular orchard inspection, following spray programmes and looking after the health of the vines.

EastPack has reduced its operating costs by 28 per cent in the last four years, under its 'Growing Excellence” programme. This is based on well proven 'Lean” principles, reducing costs, waste and increasing quality. EastPack has made investments in state of the art technology and staff training to maximise the benefits. Grader 3 in the Te Puke packhouse was installed in 2010 with robots, and for the 2013 year an InVision grader will be installed which should save a further 20 per cent in operation costs on all trays packed on Grader 3.

While some post-harvest facilities have been making cut backs, EastPack has increased its Grower Services/Orchard Management team, with Roger Hoebers, formerly of Zespri servicing the Katikati, Tauranga and Waikato areas and Margaret Miller, fomerly of Aongatete, the Opotiki region.

EastPack is committed to the kiwifruit industry and has a strong philosophy of investing in people, plant and process.

Trevelyn
- Alister Hawkey.
Volumes of Gold Hort 16a were significantly reduced this season due to Psa. We packed 33 per cent less Hort 16a than 2011.
Fruit quality has been excellent with high dry matter in green and gold varieties.

Fruit loss has been exceptionally low at Trevelyans with Hort 16a and green fruit loss being under 1 per cent.
New varieties have performed well although there have been some industry colour and shrivel issues with G9.
We are looking forward to harvesting a larger volume in 2013.