Glenview Orchard

“Orcharding is not for the faint-hearted,” says Glenview Orchard’s founder Richard Glenn, as he reviews the ups and downs of the past decade which have helped shape the business for the better.

Geoff Lewis

Photos : Trefor Ward

The family-based operation has almost seen it all: a major shift from apples to kiwifruit just in time for Psa, labour challenges and a crushing frost event. But a move to produce the whole range of commercially available kiwifruit varieties has enabled Glenview to better manage its production.

Located near Ngāhinapōuri about 10 minutes south of Hamilton, Richard and his wife Robyn launched Glenview Orchard in 1979 on 34ha with four hectares in Green kiwifruit.

As Richard explains, they had a choice between going into dairy – when most of the surrounding agriculture was pastoral – or into orcharding. They chose horticulture and initially went into kiwifruit.

‘’In the mid-1980s we planted apples – Royal Gala and Braeburn – as we wanted to diversify from having only one cultivar. While these varieties were developed in New Zealand, unfortunately they were not patented so we effectively gave them to the world.’’

At one stage Glenview had 30ha in apples, and its kiwifruit production shrank to about 2ha plus 6ha of leased blocks. Then around 2000, Zespri released the first Gold variety under Plant Variety Rights (PVR) – 16A. The Glenns decided to make the move back into kiwifruit based on varieties that had a PVR with the added bonus of Zespri as a single desk seller.

‘’We started pulling out apples and planting 16A, and we ran our own packhouse doing apples and kiwifruit for export. We packed our own until 2006 when we closed the packhouse. We were too small to be economic, going forward.

In a reasonable year, Glenview will produce around 15,000 to 16,000 trays a hectare in Gold, 10,000 trays in Hayward and 9,000 to 10,000 trays in Red

‘’We got rid of our leased orchard blocks and focused on growing ourselves. By 2015, we’d pulled all our apples out and planted Gold. Now we have 17ha in SunGold, 4ha in RubyRed – a limited release which came out about two years ago – and about 2ha in Hayward.’’

Richard is a shareholder in EastPack Ltd, which has multiple sites in the Bay of Plenty and packs about 40 million trays of kiwifruit a year.

The transition has not been without its challenges, some not of their own making. Psa arrived in New Zealand in 2010 and devastated kiwifruit growers nationwide. Being outside the main kiwifruit growing area, Glenview managed to keep the disease out until 2014, by implementing some very strict hygiene measures.

‘’As it was airborne, Psa inched closer each year and eventually we got it. Fortunately the Zespri breeding programme had thrown up SunGold which is tolerant of Psa.”

Richard was also the chairman of the EastPack Entity Trust. He has been closely involved in mentoring and advising on the new varieties that have been commercialised by Zespri. The move to three different kiwifruit varieties and their differing growing periods has advantages. ‘’Having different varieties allows us to work all year round. So we can employ permanent staff and bring in contractors at the busy times.’’

At one time Glenview employed up to 60 seasonal staff, but has returned to ‘core’ orcharding and now peaks at about 25 workers.