Tuesday, September 24, 2024

NZKGI seeks more cents from members

Avatar photo
Kiwifruit growers need to top up the coffers after draining Hi Cane fight.
Reading Time: < 1 minute

Kiwifruit growers are being asked to vote on putting in an extra two-tenths of one cent a tray to boost their organisation’s bank account after the draining exercise of defending the use of Hi Cane spray.

In a note to growers, NZ Kiwifruit Growers CEO Colin Bond says the reassessment of the budding spray through the Environmental Protection Authority committee process had cost the organisation most of its retained earnings. 

This has left NZKGI without the financial capacity to fight such cases in the immediate future.

In the past two years the organisation has also had an ongoing issue defending and working with growers hit by district council rate increases.

These were initiated by Gisborne District Council three years ago when the council pushed for a rates rise for SunGold growers, based on the higher earning value of the licensed fruit and attaching the licence to the rateable land value.

Efforts to defend this failed, resulting in the Court of Appeal upholding an earlier High Court decision that growers could be valued for rates based on their SunGold licence. This has resulted in rates increases as high as 50% for some growers.

If passed at the upcoming AGM, growers will face a new levy amount 1.3 cents a tray. This will amount to an additional $200,000 to NZKGI’s income.

Some key areas NZKGI is keen to employ the additional funds include being able to take on projects independent of Zespri funding, enhancing performance reporting of Zespri, and better capacity to respond quickly to one-off events. 

One example of this was the ability to conduct a performance analysis of the Europe mice infestation, or to build a better picture of global threats such as illegally grown SunGold fruit.

The AGM is held on August 21.

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading