Birdhurst Apples and Golden Bay Fruit

Birdhurst and Golden Bay Packhouse are two sides of a major fruit growing and packing operation owned by the Wilkins family in the Motueka and Riwaka district of Nelson province. They have invested heavily in new apple varieties grown on high-density plantings (3000 trees/ha instead of 650).

Birdhurst Limited is a family-owned company based in Motueka, jointly owned by the Wilkins family. Rhys, Kerry, Farren and Heath Wilkins are the owners of Birdhurst and actively work in the business. The company first planted apple trees in 1987 and since then pipfruit production has increased to 200ha of apples and pears (including owned and managed orchards). The varieties currently grown include Jazz™, Braeburn, Royal Gala, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Fuji, Envy™ and Pink Lady. Birdhurst is also a large kiwifruit grower and has 50 hectares of kiwifruit which is split 15ha of Gold and 35ha of Green.

Over the past six years Birdhurst has invested heavily in new apple varieties (Jazz™, Royal Gala, Fuji, Pink Lady and Envy™) and also has totally restructured their orchards into new high density planted orchards. This has meant Birdhurst has gone from the old style of growing where there were 650 trees to the hectare to 3000 trees to the hectare. Before planting apples in 1987, Birdhurst Ltd was one of the largest tobacco farmers in the Nelson region.

In 2008 Birdhurst Ltd formed a joint venture with Heywood’s Orchards and combined their packing facilities under a new company called Golden Bay Fruit 2008 Ltd. This company handles the marketing of the apples from the orchards of Birdhurst and Heywood’s. Birdhurst Ltd transferred its complete post harvest operation over to GBF and this consisted of 4000 pallets of coolstorage, a four-lane Compac grader and packing shed and 6500 bins of controlled-atmosphere capacity.

Birdhurst has 14 orchards containing in total 360,000 trees.

Birdhurst expects to harvest over 400,000 tray carton equivalents (TCEs) in 2011 and over 500,000 in 2012. This is approximately 2% of the national production.

Birdhurst uses specialised machinery for the apple harvest in the form of two self-propelled picking machines. It has seasonal labour requirements for an additional 50 casual local workers comprising locals, tourists and back packers. It also employs 200 through the RSE scheme from Vanuatu and Samoa. The RSE accommodation is at Rowntrees Orchard, 48 Central Rd, Lower Moutere.

The permanent workforce (out of season) is around 80 staff members.