Kiwi producers expect an unprecedented harvest of fruits and this season they forecast to send more than 600,000 pallets for export.

The Southampton Star vessel is expected to arrive in Shanghai at the end of this week with a cargo of about 3,000 pallets of SunGold kiwi grown in the Bay of Plenty, and another 1,600 pallets from Gisborne.

This marks the beginning of a large kiwi export season, according to an employee of Zespri, the world's largest kiwi seller, David Courtney, more than 18,000 containers will be shipped this season.“We also expect to use 45 charter vessels - three for transporting our kiwi to Northern Europe, twelve for serving our Mediterranean markets and thirty for delivering fruit to Japan, China and Korea,” added Courtney.

This season, Zespri expects to deliver more gold kiwi and less green. “Last season, we delivered 76 million trays of green kiwi and 65 million trays of SunGold.

Our latest estimates show that planned deliveries this season may exceed 75 million trays of SunGold, while exports of green kiwi will be lower by 75 million trays, ”said a company employee. China and Japan remain the two most important markets for Zespri sales of kiwi, and it is expected that these countries will continue to carry out purchases in significant volumes.