Zespri's final New Zealand kiwifruit season charter sets sail

Media Release

30 Oct 2025

Zespri’s final charter shipment of the 2025 New Zealand kiwifruit season has departed the Port of Tauranga bound for Japan.

The ship Whero is carrying more than 1.4 million trays, or more than 5,000 tonnes, of Zespri Green Kiwifruit and is expected to arrive in Tokyo mid-November, before sailing on to Kobe.

This will be Zespri’s 60th charter vessel of the season, used to ship New Zealand-grown Zespri Green, SunGold and RubyRed Kiwifruit to more than 50 markets. Its final container shipments of kiwifruit will also depart New Zealand in the coming weeks. This season, Zespri has had a significant increase in container usage, with 24,000 containers, up from 20,500 in 2024.

CEO Jason Te Brake says this year’s crop of around 215 million trays, or more than 770,000 tonnes, has been the largest yet, and it’s been a huge industry-wide effort to deliver record volumes to customers and consumers around the world.

“Our markets have been performing well, with record sales weeks in Europe, strong sales in the US and also in China throughout September thanks to the Mid-Autumn Festival.

“Our teams in market continue to drive sales to ensure we finish the season strongly and return as much value as possible to our growers. The New Zealand sales season largely wrapped up for SunGold in Europe last week, while Green will run through to the end of November. The season has also concluded for SunGold in Korea and will finish in late November/early December across our other Asian markets for both varieties, as well as in the US.

“Even with a significant increase in volume, from more than 195 million trays last season to 215 million this year, our markets have sold through extremely well. This sets us up for a smooth transition to our Northern Hemisphere-grown fruit which plays a critical role in ensuring we have year-round supply.

“We’re expecting more than 30 million trays from our Northern Hemisphere growing regions for 2025/26. This includes more than 24 million trays of Zespri SunGold and a further seven million trays of Zespri Green Kiwifruit, with the transition to Northern Hemisphere SunGold underway in Europe this week.”

Mr Te Brake says as Zespri looks to close out the season with the final charter on its way to Japan, the focus is shifting to planning for 2026 which involves Zespri, post-harvest and NZKGI.

“As well as preparing for another bumper New Zealand season, our focus is also on finalising our 2035 strategy and how we create value for growers over the next decade.

“Our strategy’s three drivers - unleashing brand-led demand, transforming our global supply, and creating the product portfolio of the future, will ensure we are set up to remain future-fit in a global environment that will be more competitive and more complex than the environment we’ve been operating in previously.”

Zespri’s 2035 strategy will be launched at its Momentum 2026 Conference in February.