Welcome to our autumn newsletter,
I have heard a few people now refer to 2020-21 as the season that kept giving. Coming to the end of it, we found some growers had more fruit to finish with than first estimated. Despite this, we did get all the export crop off and I’d like to thank everyone involved in our avocado supply chain for a huge team effort over last season.
It was a great season results wise and considering the challenges we faced with Covid-19, the high percentage of small fruit, size picking, and changing export customer requirements, we are satisfied with the results of the two pools. We had to change our initial marketing plans in order to morph along with these challenges, but the team did a great job of that, and growers also adapted with us as we
managed size picking and multiple picks per orchard in some cases.
We’ve barely had time to catch our breath and we are into the next season – the Grower Services team is estimating the crop for 2021-22 and the marketing team are preparing their communications with our international customers. In May we are holding an internal review of the 2020-21 season covering every facet, with each department from harvest to marketing presenting what happened over the season and highlighting their challenges and wins. From this we will look at the areas where improvements can be made for the season ahead – most of the improvements all come down to a goal of improving and maintaining quality which translates to more fruit in trays for you and better outcomes for us with our customers. We will report on outcomes of our review at our end of season grower meetings being held 11 May in Whangarei and 13 May in Omokoroa – please check our e-bulletins for further details.
On quality, this season was the best we have had in recent years and we will be looking further into this to see how we can maintain and build on this great performance.
Initial report on crop is that it is 10-15% up on last season and with a wetter summer than previous and greater attention to irrigation and moisture management over this period we hope that the size profile will be back within our key size range.
Inside the following pages, John and Kyra give a roundup of what’s happening in the growing regions; Jacob updates us on Pool 1 results; Jude has included a lot of important reminders on Food Safety and GLOBALG.A.P.; Erica gives good direction on crop load management; and we introduce our new Grower Advisory Group.
Regards,
Andrew Darling
Please click the link below to view the full newsletter…
Just Avocados autumn newsletter