Zespri addressing issues common to primary sector

The challenge of meeting changing consumer and societal demands is common to this country’s primary industries as they strive to manage production, environmental and societal expectations.

This was highlighted in a presentation by Zespri’s executive officer for sustainability, Rachel Depree at the New Zealand Roundtable for Sustainable Beef’s inaugural conference and annual meeting held in Invercargill recently.

“Kiwifruit has the same challenges you do; the need to show demonstrable progress to address climate change, water quality and soil health. We have consumers who are wanting it, customers who are demanding it and communities who are expecting it.”

Rachel says Zespri, which is now a global brand, is a grower co-operative made up of around 3000 growers responsible for shipping, distributing and marketing Kiwifruit grown in five countries under the Zespri brand.

Zespri is continuing to work to get closer to its consumers, and it’s clear that today, consumers are looking beyond just the product they are purchasing.

“Taste matters but people also want to know how our fruit is being produced, how the workers are treated, and they want to know it’s carbon footprint.

Rachel says carbon zero products are making it easy for consumers to make a choice and when companies like global giant Unilever say they are going to put carbon labels on 70,000 products then they will use that when they are negotiating with suppliers.

“They are seeing it as a way to manage customer supply relationships.”

Rachel says Zespri is in a place of significant demand-led expansion, while trying to balance low greenhouse gas emissions and the stewardship of the land being converted into kiwifruit production.

Challenges that are common to other primary sector industries.

Rachel says another common factor is that primary producers have an inherent connection with the land and pride in what they produce.

As a company, Zespri has defined its purpose to that of helping people, communities and the environment around the world through the goodness of kiwifruit. Its sustainability priorities are kiwifruit, environment and community and within each of these priorities are a set of ambitious targets.

“By kiwifruit, we mean the opportunity we have to help millions of people around the world have healthy eating occasions.  This is about sales but it’s also about health and demonstrates how we are aligning the business agenda with the sustainability agenda.”