A North Otago family is pivoting its orchard operation in a bid to survive decades of stagnant prices for their summerfruit.
Julie and Justin Watt moved from Auckland to buy Waitaki Orchards in 2003, despite having no experience in the sector.
The 36ha orchard operation on State Highway 83, lies about 5km southeast of Kurow.
About 32,000 trees are planted across 20ha — 10ha in apricots, 5ha in plums and the rest in nectarines, peaches and cherries.
The couple have eight children — Irene (26), Ellen (25), Geraldine (24), Alistair (23), Fergus (21), Duncan (19), Brian (17) and Heather (16).
Since buying the business, Mr Watt had had a heart bypass and ended up with a brain injury and Mrs Watt had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
The family now working full-time in the orchard are Irene Passadore (nee Watt) and her husband Cristian Passadore and Ellen Watt and her fiance Kieran Sparks, and Brian.
The two sisters said the industry faced many challenges.
Mrs Passadore said the orchard needed a ‘‘side hustle’’ because it could not survive on selling fruit alone.
Miss Watt said they had transformed a coolstore into a commercial kitchen and had developed a range of four sorbets using their fruit as ingredients.
‘‘It’s our get-out-of-jail-free card — if we can make it work, we can carry on.’’
The product — Waitaki Orchards Sorbets — had been available in New World supermarkets south of Christchurch since July last year.
Another side hustle launched last year was selling their fruit online.
Since the borders closed, fewer tourists had been visiting their roadside shop.
Some kinks in the online arm of the business needed to be ironed out but they considered the sales platform to be the way of the future.
Side hustles were needed because the prices which retailers paid for their fruit were the same — or lower — than when the family entered the industry nearly 20 years ago.
In the same time, costs, such as compliance, freight, fuel and insurance had risen.
The cost of wages had doubled, Mrs Passadore said.
‘‘There are going to have to be some changes in the industry — there are a lot of people struggling — it’s tight.’’
Miss Watt said they sold most of their fruit to produce supplier Turners & Growers, which tried to get the highest price for growers because it worked on commission.
On average, they sold a kilogram of apricots for $2.70 at Turners & Growers, which would then be sold in a supermarket for $8kg.
Supermarkets claimed margins on their fruit were slim because it was a perishable product, Miss Watt said.
Sometimes, it felt like the only solution remaining was to cut down the trees and leave the industry, she said.
‘‘There doesn’t seem to be any way to keep going.’’
Mrs Passadore said a decision to fell any trees would not be made lightly as they were ‘‘precious’’ to the family.
However, if the next harvest presented similar issues to the past two then they might have no other option.
Demand for their fruit dropped when the nationwide lockdown hit in March last year, due to the closure of the independent stores, which sold a lot of their produce across New Zealand.
Supermarkets were the only buyers during lockdown.
‘‘We ended up throwing out quite a bit of fruit because we had no market for it — which kind of sucked.’’
The staff picking fruit at the time included six women from Vanuatu, who had been in New Zealand about a month before lockdown.
Half of them returned home in September last year and the rest stayed on.
The three women — Hellen Charlie, Audrey Koulon and Maiken Anatu — had been ‘‘lifesavers’’ by pruning trees and thinning, picking and packing fruit.
‘‘The whole shebangles.’’
Earlier this month, the Government announced seasonal workers from Tonga, Samoa, and Vanuatu would be able to enter New Zealand under the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme from next month.
‘‘It was a good day when we heard the announcement,’’ Mrs Passadore said.
The plan was for two of the women from Vanuatu to return to work on the orchard next month.
As the remaining woman was now caring for a baby, she was staying in Vanuatu.
Due to border restrictions, about half of the fruit pickers required this year were pupils and students.
‘‘Which was fun.’’
However, staff shortages hit hard when educational facilities opened in February and March.
A lack of pickers meant fruit was left to rot on trees and a lack of packers meant fruit went soft in coolstores and had to be dumped.
The harvest this year had the potential to be the best yet because of a bumper crop but the milestone could not be realised due to a lack of staff, Mrs Passadore
‘‘It’s gutting — you put all that work into it and you can’t get it off the trees.’’
Miss Watt said the other half of the fruit pickers for the harvest this year were backpackers.
Many of the backpackers finished up at same time as the pupils and students because they decided to return home and face the Covid situation and ‘‘try and make something of life’’.
She expected the pool of backpackers to be much smaller for the harvest next year.
Summerfruit NZ chief executive Kate Hellstrom said the disruption caused by Covid-19 had been really tough for growers and the rising costs of overheads contributed to the stress they were already under.
She said Summerfruit NZ did not have a role in addressing pricing and the Commerce Act would not allow it to do so.
‘‘The market sets produce prices and as an industry organisation we do not have a role in this area.’’
