Business Leader of the Year nominee: Lain Jager

Zespri chief executive Lain Jager says the kiwifruit industry is confident.

This week we are celebrating excellence in leadership as we publish the nominees for the 2015 Business Leader of the Year. The winner will be revealed on Saturday in the Weekend Herald.

Zespri chief executive Lain Jager has been at the forefront of one of the most spectacular turnaround stories of the New Zealand primary sector - the kiwifruit industry's recovery from the Psa virus.

Psa cast a pall over the sector during 2010-11. By 2013-14, production of gold kiwifruit was down 55 per cent on the previous year. Big calls had to be made about taking out the affected vines and the industry faced tough times.

New cultivar Gold3 proved to be Psa-resistant, but growers still faced up to two years of lost production while re-grafting their vines.

Since then there has been a full recovery in production to greater than pre-Psa levels. Orchard prices, which slumped during the crisis, have bounced back strongly and confidence has returned.

No single person would lay claim to turning the sector around but Jager was among the vanguard, along with Zespri chairman Peter McBride and growers' representative Peter Ombler.

Jager has also seen the company through difficult distribution and legal problems in China and a restructuring of the business.

Jager says the outlook is for continued volume growth, investment to grow demand and an emphasis on delivering strong returns to growers.

"Slower global economic growth and foreign currency fluctuations [pose] some risk but we're going into 2016 with confidence."