ZESPRI To Review Report

ZESPRI TO REVIEW REPORT

[Updated 4:57pm]

ZESPRI International Limited will this week review the NERA report on industry issues reported in media today.

Carol Ward, ZESPRI’s Director – Corporate and Grower Services, said the company would be interested to see what value, if any, it might offer in terms of improving the industry’s productivity, market penetration and presence, and profitability.

However, Ms Ward said the suggestion to deregulate the kiwifruit industry was not supported by growers, the post-harvest sector, the company’s international marketing experts or government, and was therefore not on the agenda.

She said ZESPRI would be happy for Turners & Growers Limited, who currently account for less than 1 percent of the industry, to develop additional collaborative marketing proposals if they could be shown to increase overall wealth to New Zealand generally and New Zealand kiwifruit growers specifically.

Ms Ward said the collaborative marketing mechanism was already used successfully by Turners & Growers for its Pacific export operations and by around a dozen other companies. More than 70 percent of collaborative marketing applications are approved by the industry’s regulator and most were financially successful, she said.

Like any ZESPRI supplier and shareholder, Turners and Growers had a role to play in the kiwifruit industry, but a 1 percent player cannot expect to determine policy for the whole industry.

ENDS

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