‘Stormy Fruit’ brand grows out of hailstorm damage
A Nelson apple company is hoping its new product will bring a ray of light out of the gloom brought on by the Boxing Day hailstorm.
Over the weekend Golden Bay Fruit launched its new ‘‘Stormy Fruit’’ brand, comprised of apples which suffered cosmetic damage in the hailstorm but were otherwise unaffected.
Golden Bay Fruit chief executive Heath Wilkins said while the company had been mulling over the concept for several years – the hailstorm had significantly increased the amount of fruit that would fall into the new product line.
He said a significant portion of the fruit was severely damaged by the hail and had to be immediately picked and discarded, but there was another portion of fruit that just received small indentations on the surface.
Wilkins said although the quality of this fruit was still very high, cosmetically it didn’t meet class 1 standards for exports.
‘‘While the fruit is cosmetically different, it tastes the same with the same nutritional qualities – it’s still a great New Zealand apple.
‘‘It doesn’t just have to be hail damage, it could be branch rub, sunburn, a small bruise – just fruit with slightly higher cosmetic issues.’’
Wilkins said up until now growers were effectively throwing this kind of fruit away, sending it away to be juiced or selling it for stock food for little to no return. He said the new brand would also help improve the sustainability around food waste, and educate consumers that ‘‘imperfect’’ fruit could still be high-quality.
Most of the fruit (about 200-300 containers worth) will be exported overseas, with the first batch headed to Taiwan over the weekend.
Wilkins said there was much higher demand overseas for this type of fruit, although they would ‘‘love to sell it locally’’ if there was interest from New Zealand supermarkets. Despite the unique situation with this year’s crop, Wilkins said Stormy Fruit was here to stay.
‘‘In a normal year it would be just a small part of what we do, but it definitely will continue to be a part of our brand.
‘‘We needed to move quickly to get it going – we pulled it together in about five weeks. It’s been a pretty fast moving project but one we are very proud of.’’
While the project had emerged from less than ideal circumstances, he hoped it would emerge as a silver lining for the business in the long term.
According to provisional figures from the Insurance Council of New Zealand, the hailstorm caused about $44m worth of damage across the region with more than 1000 insurance claims.
There were 432 claims related to crop damage that accounted for about $20m, closely followed by 125 commercial/ business claims totalling $18.7m.
Other claims included house and contents (425 claims for $1.8m) and motor vehicles (59 claims for $146,000).
‘‘The situation is horrendous,’’, Wilkins said. ‘‘It was horrendous at the time of the hailstorm and has been horrendous since then. We’ve just been working hard to salvage something out of this year’s crop.
‘‘We hope that out of this hailstorm there might be a small ray of sunshine.’’