While apple growers are celebrating the opening of a new market it seems kiwifruit growers are filled with dread.

At Zespri’s Annual General Meeting in Tauranga this week, chairman John Loughlin, told shareholders the rapid spread of the bacterial disease, Psa-V, means the industry is arguably in its darkest hour.

Mr Loughlin says the savage destructive potential of Psa-V is being witnessed right now in Te Puke and that for some kiwifruit growers this would be the end of the road.  

Simon Limmer, Zespri's general manager of grower relations says the PSA issue certainly punctuated the mood of the whole AGM, and rightly so.

" I guess it’s the biggest the issue that the industry has faced in quite some time."

The threat of it is significant and I think people are really coming to grips with how the world’s changed in the last 12 months for kiwifruit growers.”  

The Psa-V completely overshadowed Zespri’s otherwise satisfactory financial results for the 2010/11 season.  

In the face of a global financial crisis and high exchange rate Zespri returned $883 million – an increase of four percent on the year before.

Zespri says one pleasing result was the $4.21 a tray it received for Green kiwifruit variety growers – meaning per hectare growers received $32,234 last season.

That’s a nice percent increase on the year before.

But predictably, Zespri’s profits were well down because of the nearly $13 million the cooperative has spent on fighting PSA.

Zespri’s net profit was $7.3 million, down from $25.9m the year before.  

But the future does not look as good.

Zespri ceo, Lain Jager, told growers it is simply not known yet just how much of an impact Psa-V will have on production in coming seasons.

Simon Limmer says its all a matter of time

“It’s a question of how long it is until we have some solutions or a suite of solutions if you like that is going to allow us as an industry getting on top of PSA and until such time as we start to make that progress the future looks a little bit grim.”