Zespri celebrates record-breaking 2025 kiwifruit season with largest crop yet
The final charter shipment of Zespri's 2025 New Zealand kiwifruit season departed the Port of Tauranga bound for Japan.
The ship Whero is carrying more than 1.4 million trays (over 5,000 tons) of Green Kiwifruit and is expected to arrive in Tokyo mid-November, before sailing on to Kobe.
This will be the season's 60th charter vessel carrying New Zealand-grown Green, SunGold, and RubyRed kiwifruit to more than 50 markets. Its final container shipments will also depart New Zealand in the coming weeks.
A record-breaking year for Zespri
This season, the company 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, comprising nearly 215 million trays (over 770,000 tons), 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.
“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," Te Break continued. "This sets us up for a smooth transition to our Northern Hemisphere-grown fruit, which plays a critical role in ensuring we have a year-round supply.
Te Break explained that markets have been performing well, with record sales weeks in Europe, strong sales in the US, and also in China.
Zespri's New Zealand sales season for SunGold in Europe largely wrapped up last week, while Green will run through to the end of November. The season also concluded for SunGold in Korea, he added, and will finish in late November/early December across our other Asian markets for both varieties, as well as in the US.
Seasonal change and next steps
The executive said that the company anticipates receiving more than 30 million trays from Zespri's Northern Hemisphere growing regions for the 2025/26 season.
"This includes more than 24 million trays of SunGold and a further seven million trays of Green Kiwifruit, with the transition to Northern Hemisphere SunGold underway in Europe this week,” he explained.
The brand aims to close out the season with its final charter en route to Japan. Now, the focus is shifting to planning for 2026, which involves Zespri, post-harvest, and NZKGI.
“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.”
*All images courtesy of Zespri
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