The AGM on the 30th June 2023 related to a financial year that finished a whole year ago. In future, our AGMs will be held within 6 months of the new financial year balance date of 31 May, to come into line with the Incorporated Societies Act 2022. At the next AGM in November this year, our financial reporting will be more relevant and up-to-date. This change has been made easier as we can hold AGMs over Zoom.
I’d like to highlight the work that Summerfruit NZ has been working on or completed in the past year.
The 2022-23 season gave the biggest levy take ever, just surpassing the 2017-18 season. This is a great result considering the Early Chinese New Year challenge for export fruit out of Central Otago and the low fruit volumes out of Hawke’s Bay.
Cyclone Gabrielle hasn’t made it very easy for some growers in Hawke’s Bay to see the way forward. Our hearts go out to everyone who is impacted, and their families and staff, in these trying times. Driving though the flood damaged areas makes you realise the extent of the damage, which came by way of a tsunami from the hills. This impact will be with us for many years. Out of this disaster have come some amazing stories of what happened during the cyclone, and also kindness with help and support from near and far. It shows us not to be too proud, and to accept help whether it be physical or mental help.
During the last three years, we have moved through the Covid pandemic, a labour shortage crisis, and freight disruptions. The next major concern is inflation, which just keeps eating away at our bottom line. It’s very important for the Government of the day to get on top of inflation so our businesses can survive. We cannot just keep on doing things in the same old way and expect to do well – we must continuously adapt. We need a clearer picture of the future for our industry to inspire more investment into Summerfruit. The Board has completed a ‘Strategy on a Page’ to help guide our decisions, and we welcome feedback on the values and principles we have laid out for your industry.
In the Research and Development portfolio, we worked with growers and other stakeholders to refresh our R&D strategy, and we are focusing on investing more funds into this area for the benefit of the industry. We welcome feedback from growers on our R&D priorities so we can get the most bang for our buck with this increased investment.
Over the past few years, Summerfruit NZ has been looking for ways to work collaboratively so we can create the scale needed to efficiently deliver all our functions. Other product groups are also looking at ways to sharing expertise and core services like biosecurity, administration, data collection, and communication. It makes sense to work together more closely on issues which are inherently common. Such collaboration provides scale and a unified voice to stakeholders, especially Government.
Horticulture Executive Services Ltd [HESL] is a newly formed cooperative to provide shared support to horticulture product groups. It will provide a way for small and medium product groups to pool resources where we have shared needs. Summerfruit NZ is in the process of joining this cooperative as a shareholder with the current shareholders Tomatoes NZ and Onions NZ. This will give us access to shared back-end support, with no changes to product group boards or governance arrangements. The first shared services will be Biosecurity and Administration.
We spoke to you last year about the work that Summerfruit NZ is doing to identify and evaluate an upgrade or replacement of our grower portal. Our portal needs to be able to collect richer production, planting and property data, to better support our advocacy, research and biosecurity activities. A new portal may also link with tools such as spray diaries and GIS mapping, and provide better reporting, forecasting and knowledge-base tools. We have been working with other willing product groups to look at available options to improve the user experience and meet our business process and data needs. We plan to move the portal project into HESL so the project can access co-funding and be supported by all participating product groups. This is an exciting move and will enable us to shared common resources for greater efficiencies.
The conference in Queenstown was a great success with many take homes and also it brought us together. It’s a pity we didn’t have more Hawke’s Bay growers but we understand why. Congratulations to our award winners: Tim Jones received a Life Membership and Stephanie Cavell received the Mack Nicol Award. Conference presentations are now on the portal for members to view in your own time. A great deal of work goes on behind the scenes to make our conference a success. I believe we should be having our Conference every second year and every other year having something like a dinner with guest speakers in each region. This would take pressure off our team as the Conference can be organised over two years, and it also has more potential to recover the significant running costs.
I would like to thank Kate and her team for working diligently to achieving great financial results and leading the way to making Summerfruit NZ more resilient to tackle the ever-changing future. The team is evolving too – Andrea has handed in her resignation and we are sorry to see her leave us as Andrea has served Summerfruit NZ with such commitment and dedication. We thank you so much and wish you all the best for the future on behalf of the whole industry. In January we employed Raj Singh to replace Andrea as Business Manager, and hopefully most of you have met Raj now. Tracey Mansfield has just finished in her role as Labour Coordinator, and we thank Tracey very much for her contribution to the sector over the past few years. We also have had an MPI Grad, Matt Yang, working in the team for the last 6 months. This is a first for an MPI Grad to work outside MPI so as to gain a greater understanding of how our industry works.
To the Board – thanks to Kevin Paulin for his time on the Board, and welcome to Reece van der Velden who joined the Board as an Export Director in August last year, replacing Kevin. We have all been very busy, as has everybody else in the industry, and we are a good team. I thank you all for giving up your precious time for the benefit of our industry.
May the next season be better than the season before.