New Zealand’s kiwifruit industry has picked its biggest crop on record, with growers harvesting more than 225 million trays in the 2026 season and pushing past last year’s mark of around 216 million trays. The result keeps fruit moving out of Bay of Plenty coolstores and into supermarkets across Asia, Europe and North America, and it cements kiwifruit as one of the country’s most valuable export earners.
The gold variety did most of the heavy lifting. RNZ reported that SunGold made up roughly 162 million trays of the haul, with green kiwifruit at about 58 million trays and the smaller red variety at around 5 million trays after an early February pick. SunGold has been the engine of the industry’s growth for the best part of a decade, and demand for the sweeter gold fruit has held up even as global grocery budgets tighten.
Not every part of the crop went to plan. Green kiwifruit came in lighter than expected and carried more quality problems, a result of difficult growing conditions and patchy pollination through the spring. Michael Franks, the chief executive of major grower and packer Seeka, said the volume was there but the fruit was not always up to standard. “In the case of the green kiwifruit, the numbers were there but the quality wasn’t. We had a lot more shape issues,” he said in comments reported by RNZ. Seeka packed about 45 million trays this season, down from 47 million a year earlier, and the company is forecasting a net profit of between 38 and 42 million dollars.
For the wider industry the headline number still points up. Zespri, the grower-owned marketer that sells almost all of New Zealand’s kiwifruit overseas, is projecting a corporate net profit of between 355 and 365 million dollars for the year. Chief executive Jason Te Brake said the company was holding its ground in key Asian markets despite stiff competition on price. “We’re continuing to perform well in Japan and Korea, with steady sales in China,” he said. Those three markets are central to the gold story, and keeping shelf space there matters as rival suppliers from Italy, Greece and Chile chase the same shoppers.
The scale of the season underlines how far the industry has come. A record crop means more work for packhouses, more coolstore space, more shipping containers and more seasonal labour through the autumn peak. It also means a larger payment flowing back into Bay of Plenty, Northland and other growing districts, where kiwifruit money supports orchard owners, contractors, transport firms and the towns that service them. Colin Bond, the chief executive of New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Incorporated, said the strong returns reflected years of disciplined work rather than luck. “The value we see today is not accidental. It is the result of a system that works,” he said.
That system is the single-point-of-entry model, under which Zespri is the only exporter allowed to sell New Zealand kiwifruit to most overseas markets. Supporters argue it stops growers undercutting each other abroad and lets the industry invest in plant breeding, marketing and quality control at a scale individual orchardists never could. Critics have long questioned whether a single marketer is the best deal for every grower, but the run of record crops and rising returns has taken much of the heat out of that debate for now.
The season has not been free of pressure from outside the orchard gate. Shipping costs have climbed again as conflict in the Middle East disrupts routes and pushes up freight rates, a real concern for an industry that has to move tens of millions of trays of chilled fruit to the other side of the world on tight timelines. Getting the crop picked, packed and into market quickly is the priority, because kiwifruit does not improve in storage and any delay eats into quality and price.
There is also a competitive silver lining in this year’s weather. The Australian kiwifruit harvest came in around 14 percent smaller after a hotter, drier run across the Tasman, which thins out one source of competing fruit in shared markets at exactly the time New Zealand has more to sell. Combined with a softer New Zealand dollar against the euro and the Chinese yuan, the conditions have helped support the prices growers receive once the fruit is sold.
Looking further out, the industry expects the upward trend to continue. Forecasts point to production climbing toward 236 million trays within five years, with grower returns projected at roughly 9 to 11 dollars a tray for green, 11 to 14 dollars for gold and 12.50 to 16.50 dollars for the premium red variety. Hitting those numbers will depend on new plantings coming into full production, on holding quality steady as volumes grow, and on the export logistics keeping pace with the fruit coming off the vines.
For now the story is a simple one. New Zealand has grown more kiwifruit than ever before, the gold variety continues to drive the gains, and the cheques heading back to growing regions will be larger than last year even with a disappointing green crop and rising costs at sea. The harder questions about quality, freight and competition can wait until the last of the 2026 fruit clears the coolstores.
What do you make of another record kiwifruit season and the strength of the gold export story? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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