A bright future for kiwifruit business

Tony Hawken (left) and chief financial officer John Hindmarsh are taking on more workers at EastPack. Photo / Alan Gibson

Despite toughening economic conditions one of the country's largest kiwifruit harvesters is employing more staff and investing heavily in its future.

EastPack chief executive Tony Hawken said while compliance costs and wage costs were higher, his company was preparing for the start of the new kiwifruit season with $7 million of improvements in infrastructure at its three sites throughout the Bay of Plenty.

Mr Hawken said an 8 per cent increase from suppliers would see up to 17 million kiwifruit pass through its operations when harvesting began this month.

EastPack has installed a new 400,000-tray coolstore and two robotic stackers at its Te Puke site, the largest gold kiwifruit facility in the world.

It has also invested in a 500,000-tray coolstore for its Opotiki operation, and the Edgecumbe site has upgraded its bin top and in-feed grading table system.

Despite his company's employing workers from the Pacific Islands to plug the gaps in pack houses, Mr Hawken said more staff were needed, particularly in the middle management to senior levels.

"Our fulltime employees have risen about 10 per cent this year," he said.

"We have to produce the very best we can for the overseas consumer so attention to detail is critical. If we get it right paybacks are way in excess of any additional staff costs that we have."

Mr Hawken said there was understandable nervousness among growers, with their success dictated largely by consumers in Europe and Asia, who accounted for 95 per cent of New Zealand's kiwifruit export market.

He said the declining value of the New Zealand dollar had "certainly helped". "It's not so much the US dollar because we don't do a lot of trade there.

"It's a win for us and also for the consumers. It's certainly helping with any downside with what we get paid in local currency and will help cushion any sort of downside of what consumers pay over there."

Mr Hawken said it was crucial to identify weaknesses in the production line in order to get costs down and improve efficiencies without breaking the bank.

"Then it's a matter of fixing them and then going to the next weakness and just gradually improving productivity and efficiency without reducing head numbers.

"It should be a real focus from everyone that they should look at ways they can improve their business," he said.

Last year's financial result was "a good one" but Mr Hawken was expecting an improved financial performance and balance sheet when the full-year result came through at the end of April.