A late start to the season means apple growers will face a race against time to have their fruit picked, raising concerns about the availability of labour.
The harvest normally starts in mid-February but this time around it will be late this month before picking gets under way, thanks to the weather.
With the late start to the season, the harvest window has shortened, putting more pressure on labour resources and raising concerns about whether the thousands of workers brought from overseas under the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme will be enough to cope.
"When you are talking about 560,000 tonnes of fruit, it's a massive wall of fruit," Gary Jones, business development manager at Pipfruit NZ. "It's going to be very intense," he said.
Under RSE, about 3500 workers come into Hawkes Bay, 1500 to Nelson and 1000 in Central Otago.