market report - rural

The market for rural production blocks has tended to remain soft in early 2010 in terms of both sales volumes and values.  We have seen reduced activity levels now for over two years.  This followed strong value increases and high activity levels over the three years prior to this.

There are still low numbers of kiwifruit orchards sold in recent times.  Enquiry levels have improved however and there appears to be more optimism in the marketplace following raised price predictions.  There has been some straight production blocks without dwellings which have tended to show softening in value and poorer producing blocks also at low prices.  Values have tended to be around $200,000 per canopy hectare for reasonably producing green blocks (excluding house site and other improvements) and there have been sales at over $300,000 for strong producing gold blocks.

ZESPRI anticipated orchard gate returns projections are currently around $3.70 per tray of Green kiwifruit and $7.50 per tray of Gold kiwifruit.  The Zespri Gold variety is obtaining good prices and the possibility of further new varieties rather than the Zespri Green seems to be the area of most optimism in the industry.