Welcome to our first newsletter of 2018,
I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year. To those of you who were picking through the festive season, we appreciate your support.
Exciting news to start our year with – New Zealand has achieved official approval to export avocados to China! Preparation for the audit has been a huge undertaking for the industry and the Just Avocados team is proud to have been involved in this landmark achievement. The Just Avocados Woodland Road pack house in Katikati was the facility selected, after rigorous auditing of our facilities and capability by MPI, for the industry audit process and trial shipment. The Chinese auditing body AQSIQ then undertook their audit last week on selected growers and our facility. I’d like to thank the team in the pack house – Helen, Brett and Mike who worked tirelessly to ensure we were up to the audit specifications. A big thanks also goes to Iain and Liz McGillivray who were among the growers/orchards audited in this process. We look forward to bringing you more news on the China opportunity.
In this issue, Erica provides an interesting article on cukes and possible factors that could contribute to these seedless avocados developing and John updates us on what he has observed in the North while catching big fish. You will see from Jacob’s market update on page 5 that demand in Australia has been extremely strong and is backed by incredible values. The Shepard crop in Australia was early so in order to maximise our season, we brought our export harvest plans forward. We will be finished by the end of this week. Thank you to all who worked with us to help us achieve this.
This Sunday (4 February) the team will be at the Katikati A&P show at the Uretara Domain. If you are attending, ensure that you drop in for a chat and some avocado ice cream. Profits of the ice cream sales will go to Uretara Estuary Managers Inc. We will also be at the Te Puke A&P show next Saturday (10 February) supporting the BOP Young Fruit Grower of the Year competition as a silver sponsor and will have the team on hand to talk avocados.
With the logistics of harvesting and exporting close to an end for the season, we will start to catch up with growers and review the season. We have another exciting season ahead with a new market to explore. I look forward to chatting with you about this over the coming months.
Regards,
Jarrod