According to New Zealand-based kiwifruit giant, Zespri, the 2024 kiwifruit season has the potential to be a year of strong growth across all kiwifruit offerings this year, with the company expecting to export around 193 million trays of kiwifruit to markets around the world.

While still early in the season, Zespri’s latest supply estimate reflects the positive growing conditions seen across New Zealand in recent months. This season’s crop will significantly increase the 133 million New Zealand trays shipped last season and up on the 175 million trays shipped in 2021.

Zespri CEO Dan Mathieson says this year's key focus is delivering consistently good quality fruit to customers and consumers throughout the season to help maximize the value returned to growers and communities.

“It’s been a far more settled growing environment compared to the last couple of seasons when growers were facing several challenges, including the impact of COVID-19, the significant labor shortage in 2022, and the many climatic events that New Zealand experienced in 2023.

“While it’s still early, the crop looks excellent and there’s a lot of excitement and optimism in the industry.

“That excitement is shared by our customers who are keenly anticipating having a lot more kiwifruit to meet the strong demand we’re seeing across our markets.”

Mr Mathieson says managing the increased volume of fruit throughout the supply chain and delivering consistently good quality fruit was the key consideration in the industry’s season planning process.

“We’re trying to make sure we’re striking the right balance of having a good source of early season fruit to capitalize on early season sales opportunities and having fruit that stores well so that we can have a consistent flow of fruit through the season and minimize late season quality issues.”

Mr Mathieson said Zespri was closely monitoring the disruption to international shipping though Zespri was not affected by the disruption in the Red Sea, instead shipping via the Panama Canal.

The Kiwi Brothers would again be a central piece of this season’s marketing activities to help move fruit quickly.

“Our marketing teams have been working hard on developing some great campaigns based around our award-winning Kiwi Brothers to ensure we’re able to keep our sales rates up throughout the year.

“After a tough couple of years there’s a lot of excitement about the year ahead and we’re well prepared as we get the season started through harvest over the coming weeks,” Mr Mathieson says.