SOURCE: Gerhard Uys, Stuff NZ
Cyclone Gabrielle and cold snaps in spring last year mean avocados are scarce on supermarket shelves, a grower and supermarket supplier say.
Head of domestic avocado sales at fresh produce marketer and exporter Primor Regan Booth said New Zealand sat between two growing seasons.
“Normally we have our old season and our new season mash together, so we don’t run out of product, but this year it just hasn’t worked out,” he said.
Primor supplied most of the avocados for Foodstuffs North Island’s Pak’nSave, New World and Four Square supermarkets.
New Zealand’s only other avocado supply option was Australia.
“Australia’s hass avocado season starts just before ours, but by the time the product comes over here our season has usually started,” he said
While avocados were scarce now, Booth said there would be a supply soon.
“Generally, the fruit matures mid-May and once it’s passed a maturity test it will go through picking, packing and ripening. I expect we’ll see avocados back on shelves early-to-mid June,” Booth said.
Produce merchandise manager for Foodstuffs North Island Brigit Corson said the avocado season had run short.
Prices of fresh produce would always be impacted by supply and demand, when supply was low the prices were higher, she said.
Whangarei avocado grower Deon Cartwright said there was a general shortage because cold snaps in October meant there was low fruit set.
This meant fewer fruit would grow. The cold also meant fruit were “ridged”.
Ridging was a quality issue that affected the skin and excluded fruit from export.
“Basically it creates like a wave and a ripple in the skin surface,” he said.
There were also a number of big wind events, with Cyclone Gabrielle being the worst, he said.
Some growers lost half of their crops, with other growers having so much damage they simply cut fruit off trees because damaged fruit had no value. Others sent fruit to the low-paying processing markets, he said.
“My orchard is north facing, and I was protected from a south-easterly and south-westerly wind,” he said.
There was also a lot of variation in fruit set this season throughout the country, he said.
“I was in an orchard in Te Puke, I looked up at trees in one orchard and couldn’t see fruit, then I’d go to the next block and there’d be fruit,” he said.
There could be a domestic oversupply of avocados if the harvest came in and fruit were not good enough quality to export, he said.
“I think domestic consumers in New Zealand will see favourable pricing for avocados in the main season and then it will probably taper off to a shortage of supply, like this year,” Cartwright said.
Growers could possibly lose a lot of money if low quality fruit sold for less than what it cost to produce, he said.
Avocado nursery owner Stephen Wade said the industry could grow more avocados if it managed orchards differently.
At the moment the average New Zealand orchard produced 10 tonnes of avocado fruit per hectare, but by using better pruning techniques orchards could produce up to 20 tonnes of fruit, he said.
Planting smaller trees, and planting those trees closer together, would mean trees sheltered each other from winds, and harvest would be easier, he said.