Kiwifruit industry in New Zealand

Kiwifruit or kiwi is a major horticultural export earner for New Zealand. New Zealand developed the first commercially viable kiwifruit and developed export markets, creating the demand for the fruit that exists today. Today New Zealand is the third largest kiwifruit producing country, next to China and Italy, and holds approximately 30% of the market share. In the 2008–2009 season the value of New Zealand kiwifruit exports was NZ$1.45 billion.
Kiwifruit originates from mountainous areas of central China, including the modern provinces of Hunan and Hubei. While there is currently no evidence of kiwifruit being cultivated as a traditional crop in China, even in the early 20th century, rural communities in these areas would traditionally collect wild fruit from the Actinidia genus to sell at markets.
Cultivation of the fuzzy kiwifruit spread from China in the early 20th century, when seeds of Actinidia deliciosa were introduced to New Zealand by Mary Isabel Fraser, the principal of Whanganui Girls' College who brought back seeds to New Zealand after visiting her sister, a missionary teacher who lived in Yichang, Hubei Province, China, in 1903. The fruit had been popularised among the Western communities living in Yichang by British plant collector Ernest Henry Wilson, and the seeds which Fraser brought back likely came from plants collected by Wilson from Sichuan. While kiwifruit seeds were also introduced to the United States and Europe during the same time period, only seeds from New Zealand developed into commercial varieties.
The seeds were planted in 1906 by nurseryman Alexander Allison, at his property Letham, south of Whanganui, with the vines first fruiting in 1910. Allison gave seeds to other nurserymen and orchardists throughout the North Island, and by 1917, the plant was being sold to nurserymen under the name Chinese gooseberry, and growers were encouraged to select for larger elongated or oval fruit. This name remained the popular name for the fruit in New Zealand until the 1960s.
Over time, numerous cultivars were developed by different growers. In the early 1950s, Harold Mouat of the Fruit Research Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, classified and standardised many of the known important varieties, which included Abbott, Allison, Bruno, Gracie, Hayward, Montgomery and Elmwood. Bruno, named after Bruno Just, was known for being particularly elongated, while Hayward was considered the most commercially important cultivar. All of these cultivars descend from three individual plants (one male and two female vines) grown by Allison. Hayward was developed in Avondale, New Zealand, around 1924, and named after its creator, Hayward Wright. By the late 1960s, it had become the dominant cultivar of kiwifruit exported from New Zealand, and by 1975 the sole export.
By the 1920s, kiwifruit plants were sold at nurseries, becoming increasingly popular in the 1930s and 1940s, although primarily grown in private gardens and occasionally sold in local markets. The grower Bruno Just was a major influence in establishing the popularity of the plants, who in the late 1920s sold an estimated 8,000-10,000 plants across the North Island, primarily in the Tauranga and Te Puke areas. The first commercial orchards in New Zealand were established by Fred J. Walker near Whanganui in the early 1930s, followed by those in the Bay of Plenty. One of the best known of the early orchardists of the Bay of Plenty was Jim MacLoughlin, often cited as the "father" of the kiwifruit industry, who began planting vines in 1932 at Te Puke.
The crop saw increased interest in New Zealand during World War II, due to increased restrictions on fruit importations to New Zealand, and the fruit gained popularity among British and American servicemen stationed in New Zealand during World War II. By the 1950s, increased numbers of kiwifruit orchards were being planted to serve the domestic market.
In 1952, MacLoughlin approached the New Zealand Fruit Federation who agreed to facilitate the shipping and marketing of the fruit to United States markets, this was New Zealand's first export of Chinese gooseberries. Due to pioneering research into how transportable the fruit could be by John Pilkington Hudson and others at the agriculture department in Wellington, this was the first international export of the kiwifruit.
In 1955, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research of New Zealand undertook its first investigations into kiwifruit-related breeding, when the department imported Actinidia arguta (known as kiwiberries) from England to New Zealand.
During the late 1950s, fruit importers in California were reporting issues with the name Chinese gooseberry, due to fears by United States Department of Agriculture quarantine officers of the possibility of anthracnose fungus contamination, a known issue associated with European gooseberries, grown close-to-ground and easily contaminated by soil. The name "melonette" was suggested by Harvey Turner of the New Zealand company Turners & Growers, and the fruit was briefly exported to the United States in the 1950s under this name. An American importer, Norman Sondag of Ziel & Co, San Francisco, complained that this name was as bad as Chinese gooseberry because melons and berries were both subject to high import tariffs, and instead asked for a short Māori name that quickly connoted New Zealand.
The name kiwifruit was coined by Jack Turner during a meeting between Sir Harvey Turner, Jack Turner and Grahame Turner in June 1959. The name was chosen to be analogous to passionfruit, but incorporating kiwi, an informal name used to describe New Zealanders, which Turner felt that United States servicemen stationed in the Pacific during World War II would have fond associations with. The first known print reference to kiwifruit comes from a Ziel & Co brochure, dating to September 1959.
The new name was soon widely used in California, due in part to Frieda Caplan, founder of Los Alamitos-based Frieda's Inc., who played a key role in popularising kiwifruit in the United States, and convinced supermarket produce managers to carry the fruit. Another major factor in establishing the popularity of the name was its use by Californian orchardists, who adopted the name when growing the crop locally. The fruit continued to be known as Chinese gooseberries in New Zealand by the 1960s, gradually falling out of favour. By 1970, all exports from New Zealand used the name kiwifruit.
Multiple myths are associated with the naming of kiwifruit, including that the name change was linked to Anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States, or that the fruit was named after the kiwi bird, a national symbol of New Zealand with a similar appearance to the fruit.
The export market for kiwifruit greatly increased in the 1960s, with the fruit gaining popularity in the United Kingdom, Australia, and other parts of the United States outside of California. 53 t (58 tons) of kiwifruit were exported from New Zealand in 1962, which by 1964 had increased in volume to 82 t (90 tons). New kiwifruit orchards were planted in New Zealand focusing on increasing production for the export market, and by 1973, 90% of kiwifruit orchards were found in the Bay of Plenty area. 1976 was the first year when kiwifruit export volumes exceeded domestic volumes. In 1974, kiwifruit was added to the consumer price index (CPI) basket.
The growth of the export market during the 1960s was composed of individual growers, grower cooperatives, exporters and distributors. An attempt to develop a joint marketing effort saw the establishment of the Kiwifruit Export Promotion Committee in 1970, followed by the Kiwifruit Marketing Licensing Authority in 1977. The Kiwifruit Marketing Licensing Authority had the rights to establish market standards such as fruit size, quality and packaging of kiwifruit for export markets, the Authority also acted as an adviser to the government. This gave growers some control of licensing exporters.
By the 1980s, the European market composed 75% of the total kiwifruit exports from New Zealand, leading increasingly interest from European growers to begin planting Hayward variety kiwifruit vines locally. By 1990, kiwifruit production in Italy had grown to be larger than that in New Zealand. When growing operations in France, Portugal, Chile and Japan began selling fruit, this led to a crash in the market price in 1992.
In November 1989, the export arrangement was reorganised in response to pressure from increasing fruit supplies from competing overseas export markets. To regain profitability and stability, the New Zealand Government and growers colluded to establish a single-desk export arrangement. This granted a monopoly on the marketing of kiwifruit to the New Zealand Kiwifruit Marketing Board and mandated that all suppliers sell their products through this single buyer (see also monopsony) for all exports outside of Australasia. In 1990, the New Zealand Kiwifruit Marketing Board opened an office for Europe in Antwerp, Belgium.
In 1997 the marketing board rebranded to Zespri. All New Zealand kiwifruits are marketed under the brand-name label Zespri. The branding move is also intended to distinguish New Zealand kiwifruit from other fruit and prevent other companies from gaining benefit from Zespri's activities. Zespri International Ltd. is owned by 2,700 local growers through Zespri Group Ltd, which was established in 2000. Zespri has the role of promoting and selling kiwifruit in overseas markets, as well as establishing regulations on which kiwifruit can be sold in the export markets. Zespri has been used for marketing of all green and gold cultivars of kiwifruit from New Zealand since 2012.
Zespri began focusing on promoting proprietary fruits, developed due to work by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and HortResearch during the decades of 1970–1999. Hort16A, a gold kiwifruit and cultivar of Actinidia chinensis, was the first to be brought to international markets in 2000 under the name Zespri GOLD™, becoming the first commercially successful cultivar of kiwifruit from a planned breeding programme. Almost 3,000 tons of gold kiwifruit were exported to the United States in the summer of 2002, By 2010, Zespri GOLD™ accounted for one third of the total sales of kiwifruit in New Zealand, and licenses for plants were sold to growers France, Italy, South Korea and Japan.
From 2007, bacterial infection caused by Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae (commonly referred to as PSA) began impacting orchards growing Hort16A variety kiwifruit in New Zealand, causing significant economic losses. By November 2011, most orchards across the Bay of Plenty has begun displaying some level of infection, some of the attacks by the virulent strain PSA-V. These mirrored similar issues caused by PSA seen in orchards across Italy and France in 2011. In response, a new cultivar, Zesy002 (marketed as Zespri SunGold™) was chosen as a replacement less susceptible to PSA. By 2022, two-thirds of kiwifruit volume produced in New Zealand were for gold kiwifruit varieties.
Turners & Growers began to challenge Zespri's export monopoly of New Zealand's kiwifruit industry in 2009 to gain the right to export their own kiwifruit varieties without using Zespri. However, in October 2011 the case was dropped in response to pressures from a new bacterial disease causing devastating losses in kiwifruit. In mid-2013 a China-based Zespri subsidiary was fined nearly $1M for under-declaring customs duties, and the Serious Fraud Office launched an investigation into Zespri itself in October 2013.
In 2017, New Zealand growers were acquiring additional land to grow Zespri gold kiwifruit under rising costs for a Zespri license to meet global demand for the gold cultivar.
In December 2019, Zespri announced the commercialisation of a new cultivar of kiwifruit, Zes008, marketed as Zespri RubyRed™.
In mid-February 2020, the New Zealand Government agreed to pay NZ$40 million to 212 kiwifruit orchardists and Te Puke–based post harvest operator Seeka to settle a class action lawsuit alleging that the government was liable for losses caused by the incursion of Pseudomonas, which swept through the Bay of Plenty region in 2010. Kiwifruit orchardists had initially challenged a Court of Appeal ruling that the Government could not be held liable for the damage caused by the pathogen despite the Ministry of Primary Industries allowing the bacteria into the country through the import of kiwifruit pollen from China. As a result of the settlement, the appeal was withdrawn.
The kiwifruit vine has become an invasive plant species in the Bay of Plenty Region due initially to the dumping of fruit next to bush remnants. The Department of Conservation, responsible for protecting public land, classify Actinidia deliciosa as an environmental weed.