Gizzy: a place to call Holmes

From left, Black Fern Renee Holmes and father Laurie (second from left) with the First Fresh NZ team Phil Croy, Grant Watson, Justine Hurlstone.Picture by Paul Rickard

Homegrown sportswoman and Black Ferns rugby player Renee Holmes was in town on Monday meeting a team of a different sort.

Holmes toured the Lytton Road packhouse of First Fresh NZ Ltd and met the staff there and in the field. She visited local orchards and met growers.

During last year’s persimmon season, Holmes used her social media platform — which has almost doubled in reach since the Women’s World Cup success — to promote persimmons to new markets.

The collaboration had been “very successful”, said Grant Walsh, First Fresh NZ Ltd sales and marketing director.

It enabled the company to engage with audiences they had not been able to reach in the past.

Touring the operation — from start to finish — at the First Fresh packhouse, Holmes met some of the staff she had observed packing navel oranges.

She was then taken to Bushmere Road to see a block of persimmons managed by Eddie Collins of the Wi Pere Trust.

It was the first time Holmes had been in a persimmon orchard and she witnessed the early stage of fruiting.

Having been briefed on how the operation was run and how persimmons were nurtured, Holmes visited a nearby citrus block to meet local grower Jason Galloway and his daughter Milly, and see an encore mandarin block that was being harvested.

Holmes said she was grateful for the opportunity to come back to Gisborne and meet the staff at First Fresh NZ Ltd . . . the orchard tours were an eye-opener.

She was excited about the possibility of working more with the First Fresh NZ team and at the prospect of working alongside the company to promote Gisborne produce and encourage people to make better nutritional choices for their health and wellbeing.