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Season calendar

New Zealand kiwi export season

Kiwi season in New Zealand: May–August, with April and September–November at the shoulders. Lands May–October via New Zealand → Philadelphia.

Ships
May–August
April, September–November at the shoulders
Lands
week 21–40
on the New Zealand → Philadelphia run, 26–35 days
New Zealand kiwis: the export window by month, and the weeks each lane lands it.
Stage Month
Ships out of New Zealand Ships may–august peak · april, september–november shoulder
New Zealand → Philadelphia 26–35 days · week 21–40 Lands week 21–40 on the New Zealand → Philadelphia run
New Zealand → Rotterdam 32–42 days · week 22–41 Lands week 22–41 on the New Zealand → Rotterdam run
Peak Shoulder Landing Port to port, across services rather than one schedule. Add the road leg at either end.

Varieties Hayward green, SunGold Load ports Tauranga, Napier, and Nelson

Harvest runs from about February to June; shipping runs from March into November. New Zealand is the origin that defines this crop for a European or Asian buyer. The gap between those two ranges is the whole point: the fruit is held in store and released against a programme rather than against the harvest.

The Bay of Plenty grows about 79% of the crop, around Te Puke, Katikati, Tauranga, Ōpōtiki and Whakatāne. The rest is spread from Kerikeri in the north to Motueka in the south. Picking runs by variety rather than by region: RubyRed first, then SunGold, then green. In 2025 the first fruit was picked on 13 February near Edgecumbe, the earliest start on record, and the harvest peaked in mid-April and finished in June.

Exports start almost as soon as picking does. The first charter vessel of 2025 left Tauranga for Shanghai on 14 March with 1.2 million trays of SunGold. On average April and May are the two biggest export months, with 17.7% and 19.5% of the year’s shipments. The early weeks therefore carry more fruit than the band above suggests. The last charter of 2025 left in late October with green fruit for Japan. SunGold in Europe finished in late October and green sold through to the end of November.

SunGold ships ahead of Hayward green and commands the premium. Both are on the longest reefer lanes in this calendar, five weeks or more to Northern Europe, which is only possible because kiwifruit tolerates it. A window this long is not a long harvest; it is a long store.

The scale is what makes the programme. Zespri sold a record 220.9 million trays in 2024/25, 26.5 million of them grown outside New Zealand. The 2025 New Zealand crop was about 215 million trays, and Zespri forecast 225 million for 2026. In 2025 it moved on 60 charter vessels and about 24,000 containers. By volume the EU took 32% of exports in 2024/25, China 27%, Japan 14% and the United States 6%. The EU tariff went when the NZ–EU free trade agreement came into force in May 2024.

Weather sets the volume, not the timing. In 2023, after several severe weather events and an April hail storm in Te Puke, the crop fell to about 136 million trays from 171 million the year before. Green fell to about 42 million trays, one of its lowest volumes in 20 years. The Psa vine disease found in 2010 did lasting damage, and the recovery came through the Psa-tolerant SunGold. At the end of the season Zespri’s own Northern Hemisphere supply takes over: more than 30 million trays were expected for 2025/26.

Sources

Last reviewed August 2026. Editorial ranges for a normal year, not a published schedule. Weather moves them, sometimes by weeks.

Kiwi season across every origin · Everything New Zealand ships

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