NZ's biggest orchard approved

Avocados will be grown on former dairying land at Tapora by the Kaipara Harbour. Photo / Suppied

Harbour Edge Avocados Ltd aims to establish the largest avocado orchard in New Zealand on a 405ha dairy farm it has acquired on the Okahukura Peninsula at Tapora on the Kaipara Harbour west of Wellsford.

Two other major avocado growing enterprises also recently set up at Tapora.

Businessman and mandarin grower Tony Gibbs is expected to have 24,000 avocado trees planted on 60ha by next spring and former Fresh Food Exports owner John Greensmith is planting a 50ha orchard.

Harbour Edge's $8 million purchase of the dairy farm required Overseas Investment Office (OIO) approval as the firm is Warkworth-based capsicum grower Southern Paprika Ltd, owned 50:50 by Alexander Cropping Ltd and the Dutch firm Beheermaatschappu Legmeerpolder BV.

The OIO gave the green light in December and Companies Office records show that in February Alexander Cropping's 1,004,000 shares and Beheermaatschappu Legmeerpolder's 996,000 shares in Harbour Edge were removed, with Southern Paprika becoming a 50 per cent shareholder in the new venture with the farm vendors - Peter Glen Inger and Joanne Inger, of Takapuna, and Maurice Carey, of Epsom - retaining the other 50 per cent.

Peter Glen Inger, a founding member of the Warehouse Group, is a director of Harbour Edge along with Hamish Alexander, who is the sole director of Alexander Cropping.
Soil and the climate at the Tapora dairy farm are ideal for avocado production. Harbour Edge plans to plant about 100,000 avocado trees on 295ha by the end of the 2020-21 financial year, with the rest of the land to be eventually used for other horticultural purposes.

The 100,000 trees will produce about 5000 tonnes of avocados annually and Harbour Edge intends exporting 90 per cent, seeing strong growth opportunities in Japan, Korea, India and China. The fruit will be packed at the Southern Paprika site in Warkworth and marketed under the name Harbour Edge Avocados.

Avocados are one of New Zealand's most valuable horticultural exports, but have had a rollercoaster ride over the past five years. In 2012 exports reached $98m, fell to $33m in 2013, rebounded to $99m in 2014, reached a peak of $119m in 2015, but the 2.5 million trays exported last year fetched only $83m.

However, the current export crop is expected to be the largest ever, at 5.2 million trays out of a total of about 7.2 million trays grown, and the Ministry for Primary Industries predicts export returns for 2017 to increase over 80 per cent to a record $149m.

Avocado NZ chief executive Jen Scoular said the industry was working on ways to increase consistency from year to year by better pruning, benchmarking orchard performance across all growers and introducing new clonal rootstocks.

She said Harbour Edge could have trouble finding enough quality avocado trees to plant in its new orchard.

"Nurseries are growing 100,000 trees a year and they are sold out for the next two years," she said.