T&G Global Announces Excellent Start to 2024 JAZZ™ Apple Season; Craig Betty Comments
NEW ZEALAND - Retailers will soon be playing the smooth tune of JAZZ™ apples in their produce departments. T&G Global announced that the first 2024 Aotearoa New Zealand-grown JAZZ apples are being picked this week. This season, T&G and its independent growers will collectively pick over 4 million tray carton equivalents of apples this year.
“Across the country, we’ve had near-perfect apple growing conditions, with hot sunny days and cool nights, enabling the crop to develop great colour and eating quality,” said Craig Betty, Director of Operations. “Our JAZZ apples taste great—with that perfect balance of crisp, tangy-sweet flavour that consumers love and seek out.”
T&G and its growers began harvesting early season varieties including Poppi™, Royal Gala, and Pacific Queen™ in Tairāwhiti Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay in early February. The South Island JAZZ crop is up next, which will be harvested a few weeks later. Envy™ branded apples will begin to be picked in early April.
“Last year, with Cyclone Gabrielle striking Hawke’s Bay just as our harvest was getting underway, some JAZZ volumes were impacted,” Betty continued. “Our team, together with our independent growers, have put in a huge amount of work to clean up and restore orchards. The quality of this season’s crop is testament to their dedication and effort.”
The first JAZZ shipments will depart Napier Port bound for Asia in late March, a press release stated.
“In addition to JAZZ being readily available in stores across Aotearoa New Zealand for Kiwis to enjoy, in late March our first shipments will depart Hawke’s Bay for Hong Kong, and over the coming months JAZZ will be available in China, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam,” Betty added.
It’s also the first full season T&G’s state-of-the-art automated Hawke’s Bay packhouse has been operational.
“Our Whakatu packhouse helps ensure we have the capacity to handle increasing volumes of fruit and that the quality of our fruit is prioritized by utilizing some of the world’s leading AI defect sorting, soft fruit handling, and robotic fruit packers and palletizer technology,” Betty concluded.
As these high-quality apples hit shelves, keep an eye out for ANUK.
