Despite a temporary trade suspension in the season, an executive of New Zealand's Zespri says China is still on track to become the kiwifruit shipper's biggest market for the first time this year.

In early August the entity announced it was suspending China-bound exports after the Asian country's border control agency AQSIQ said it had detected the bacterium Neofabraea actinidia in two shipments in July.

Speaking to www.freshfruitportal.com, Zespri chief operating officer Simon Limmer said no sales were lost despite the trade disruption.

"Things have now normalized. We put in place some new checking procedures, and while we did that we didn’t lose any sales thankfully. We’ve managed just to track on through," he said.

He added there had been enough stock in the market, and airfreight shipments had begun again in early September.

"It’s moving fine. We’ve had very little interruption to fruit flying into China at all," he said.

"We have diverted a little bit of product away from China just to de-risk it a little bit. But it is on track [to become the largest market], along with Japan.

"Japan and China are really running neck-and-neck in terms of volume this year - they are our two biggest markets and they represent about 17-18% of total volumes each."

He said the diverted fruit had been sent to Europe, but highlighted these were 'relatively small volumes'.

"It’s really just a bit of a release valve for us to ensure that we’re not going to get caught out at the end of the season," he said.

Chinese production potential

Limmer said Zespri was currently in an 'investigatory phase' for assessing the feasibility of forming partnerships in China to grow kiwifruit.

"It’s really handful of questions – can we produce premium quality kiwifruit in China, so is the environment conducive for it? Given the volume coming out of China we would say the answer is almost certainly yes," he said.

"And secondly we’re looking at varieties which are coming out of China that are suited to that environment and obviously suited to Chinese consumers as well.

"The practices and the management systems that we can put in place to ensure safety and ensure quality are important to us and we’re seeing consolidation of production and post harvest systems which are evolving in a positive way."

He added that perhaps the most important aspect was whether or not the Chinese consumer would have confidence in a Chinese-grown product carrying a premium brand, given the problems with counterfeiting.

"There are a number of steps for us to go through and a number of questions that we need to answer," he said.

"We are investing pretty heavily to draw some conclusions over the next couple of years just to understand whether that is a strategic option for us."

'Such strong demand' for SunGold

Limmer said the current season, which is around half way through, had been going well around the world, with good demand for gold varieties.

Zespri's SunGold volumes grew 50% year-on-year this season, with a similar increase expected next year. It is also a record production year for green kiwifruit.

The representative mentioned some markets had been 'pretty competitive' earlier in the year, in part due to the Northern Hemisphere season running later than normal.

Zespri's Northern Hemisphere production season is a few weeks away from kicking off, and Limmer said the smoothness of the transition would depend on how the New Zealand campaign finishes up.

"Gold sales, in particular SunGold, have gone really strongly in all markets out of New Zealand," he said, adding gold volumes out of Italy were on the up.

"We’re doubling our volumes [in Italy] from last year to this year. We’ve still got quite a long way to go before we start to reach maturity from a production perspective, but it’s good to have those volumes come on stream because there is such strong demand for it."

He added for now he did not foresee any market 'overhang' going into Northern Hemisphere supplies.

Photo: www.shutterstock.com

www.freshfruitportal.com