We held an export order signing in Zhouzhi County together with the Zhouzhi Shangougou Kiwifruit Professional Cooperative. The first batch is locked for the Middle East, and the arrangement is expected to pull more than one hundred local kiwifruit households into the programme.
The structure behind the order
The agreement runs on a company plus cooperative plus base plus grower model. We handle seedlings, inputs, the technical standard, picking windows and packing. The cooperative organises labour and land, and the households keep farming their own blocks. What changes for the grower is that fruit is bought against a known grade standard rather than sold into a spot market at whatever the day’s price happens to be.
For a buyer, this structure matters more than it first appears. Volume sourced through a cooperative tends to be steadier than volume assembled spot by spot, because the same blocks are committed for the season. It also means the quality standard is written before the season starts, not negotiated at the truck.
Why the Middle East
Gulf supermarkets and food-service distributors have been asking for green and gold kiwifruit that holds up in ambient display better than the fruit they can get closer to home, at a price point below New Zealand origin. That is a gap Chinese kiwi fruit can fill, provided cold chain and residue compliance are tight. Transit from our base to Gulf ports is short, which is a genuine advantage: less time in the box, less shrink on arrival. See the fresh kiwifruit line for calibres and packing options.
What runs next
Grading started with the September picking window. Cartons for this programme are packed to the buyer’s specification in our registered packing house, with phytosanitary certificate and certificate of origin issued per shipment.
If you are looking at the same markets, the practical question is timing rather than availability. Send your target calibre, carton format and discharge port through the inquiry form and we will tell you what we can load and when.