New Zealand's 2025 kiwifruit harvest kicked off at the beginning of February. This year has been marked as a historic one for growers as the earliest-ever harvest and the largest crop forecast in history, breaking the 200-million-tray milestone in the country. 

The first kiwifruit picked in the country was Zespri's RubyRed variety, picked just outside of Edgecumbe in the Bay of Plenty in early February.

The red kiwifruit is for supermarket shelves in NZ, and some are for the overseas market. The harvest of the Gold and Green kiwifruit varieties follows. 

The fruitful year can be mainly attributed to favorable weather conditions, ideal for growing high-quality kiwifruit, and increased planted hectares. New Zealand's Growers Incorporated CEO, Colin Bond, spoke with Freshfruitportal.com about the organization's expectations for this season. 

Bond said 2024 went exceptionally well, with a record crop of 193 million trays. This year, they expect over 200 million trays. 

"It's all about the numbers of planted hectares that we have, and that's been increasing steadily over the last few years in New Zealand," Bond explained. "We've been planting more gold kiwifruit in the last three years and commercializing the red variety."

Bond said that the industry has had a great growing season in addition to an increase in planted hectares and the commercialization of red kiwifruit. "We've had a good winter chill, a great spring, and other than a few adverse weather events around the country, overall, it's been a great growing season that has set us up for what we're pretty confident will be a record crop." 

He says that the Sungold kiwifruit or gold variety has seen the most significant growth over the last decade, and the organization anticipates at least 190 million trays this year.

The gold variety is followed by 60 million trays of what he called "the foundation of our industry," the green or Haywood variety, and last but not least the red variety RubyRed, which has been commercialized for the last three seasons, matures earlier than other varieties and has been behind New Zealand kiwifruit's early season. They expect three million trays of RubyRed this season. 

Exports 

As for exports, Bond noted that most of New Zealand's kiwifruit gets exported. "Over 95% of our fruit is exported outside of New Zealand; we simply don't have the population base in NZ to eat the kiwifruit we produce," Bond explains. "Plus, there's a huge global demand for our production." 

New Zealand remains the world's largest exporter of kiwifruit. According to data released by Stats NZ, the 2024 kiwifruit export season was valued at $3.5 billion, an increase of $1 billion or 44% compared with 2023. Most of the country's fruit is shipped to Asia or the European Union. 

This year is historic for the industry, but this is not the country's last hurrah. Bond says there's still a lot of opportunity for expansion of the Sungold variety and future opportunities for the RubyRed variety. 

"We're confident that whilst we're hoping to hit a record of 200 million trays this year, that's not going to be the last record we set as an industry."