Horticulture statistics

New Zealand's horticulture industry has continued to grow, recording its highest ever annual returns last year. New figures show fruit, vegetables, wine and flowers were worth more than $6 billion exports and domestic spend in the year to 30 June 2009, up around $470m on 2008.


'Fresh Facts in New Zealand Horticulture - 2009', published by Plant & Food Research and industry analysts Martech Consulting, found export returns for the year to June 2009 topped $3.4b (free-on-board value), up from $2.94b in 2008, and nearly doubling those of a decade ago, when in 1999 NZ horticultural exports were $1.74 billion.

Two crops clearly stand out over the past ten years; kiwifruit exports have increased from less than half a billion ($478m) in 1999 to over one billion ($1.07bn); and wine exports have increased from $126m in 1999 to close to $1 billion ($985m). The past year alone has seen kiwifruit and wine exports increased by 23.1% and 24.0% respectively.

Fresh fruit remains New Zealand’s largest horticultural export sector, with revenues of $1.58b (up 18.2% on 2008), mostly from kiwifruit ($1.07b) and apples ($396m).

Fresh vegetable exports fell slightly against 2008, primarily due to the reduction in fresh onion exports following the big increase experienced the previous year. Processed vegetables increased by $19.3m (6.1%) overall in 2009, with frozen potato exports up $17.3m (27.2%) and dried vegetables up $16.0m (37.5%) offsetting decreases in other processed vegetables.