Fruit moves, meat doesn’t
The Strait of Hormuz normally carries around a fifth of the world’s oil and vast quantities of containerised trade. Since attacks on Iran forced all shipping lines to suspend services through the strait, traffic has collapsed to just one or two oil tankers per day versus a typical 80.
For New Zealand exporters shipping $3.1 billion worth of product annually to GCC countries, the closure is a crisis. Kotahi CEO Emma Parsons confirmed the logistics company had 4,000 TEU of cargo in transit on the Hormuz trade lane when services stopped. Chilled meat exports to the Middle East, worth $166 million last year, face the sharpest pain.
Then there’s Zespri, calmly shipping fruit to Europe via a different ocean.
What boardroom decisions look like in practice
Zespri CEO Jason Te Brake confirmed in late March that the company’s shipping programme is “tracking well, with fruit moving steadily into market, with fruit to Europe shipped via the Panama Canal”. The company ships roughly half its crop via container and the other half on chartered refrigerated vessels, giving it the ability to shift volume between modes if container availability tightens.
“We do have the ability to put more into charter ships if required,” Te Brake told Farmers Weekly.
On fuel costs, charter vessel pricing is locked in at load-out. Te Brake noted that forward pricing beyond April was already showing rapid declines, though he acknowledged whether that holds is a “million-dollar question.”
The result: March 2026 guidance placed top-of-range prices at SunGold $12.75, Green $10.75, and RubyRed $17.50 per tray, all above February forecasts, from a crop of around 220 million trays. The company is not just surviving the disruption. It’s beating guidance through it.
Why geography is strategy
Zespri’s primary markets are Europe, Japan, China and North America. None require ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz. The Middle East represents a small share of total volume, with collaborative marketing to the UAE described as limited. This market mix wasn’t luck. It was built over years of deliberate geographic diversification.
That diversification is accelerating. RubyRed volumes rose from around 3 million to 5 million trays, with sales extended to Australia, Vietnam and Canada for the first time, all markets using Pacific or Indian Ocean routes. Chair Andrew Flowerday used Zespri’s parliamentary event to push for ratification of the NZ-India FTA, calling India “hugely important” to the company. Opening India isn’t just market access. It’s corridor diversification.
Contrast this with red meat exporters. New Zealand shipped 16,000 tonnes of lamb to Persian Gulf markets in the season to September 2025, with Saudi Arabia taking about half. Alternative ports like Jeddah exist outside the Gulf, but the Meat Industry Association warned these are likely to face significant congestion and delays.
The input cost time bomb
Even well-insulated exporters face a second-order risk that hasn’t attracted enough attention. BERL’s March analysis flagged that New Zealand imported 290,010 tonnes of urea from Saudi Arabia in 2024, and the Middle East accounts for 35 percent of global seaborne urea exports.
Domestic alternatives are fragile. BERL noted that Ballance AgriNutrients assessed that if gas becomes unaffordable, the Kapuni ammonia-urea plant may face shutdowns lasting three to four months. Growers celebrating record kiwifruit returns today could be absorbing sharply higher fertiliser costs by next season.
Resilience is a boardroom function now
Sherelle Kennelly, CEO of NZ Customs Brokers and Freight Forwarders Association, told RNZ that repeated crises have made flexibility instinctive: “This has become part of our DNA now.” But there’s a difference between freight forwarders adapting tactically and exporters building structural resilience.
Zespri’s advantage isn’t operational agility alone. It’s the architecture underneath: dual shipping modes, fuel cost lock-ins, market mixes that avoid corridor concentration, and the scale to command 60 charter vessels per season and 24,000 containers. Infometrics chief economist Brad Olsen estimates “at least three months of possible disruption” ahead. That’s long enough to separate the companies that invested in optionality from those now paying the price for treating supply chains as back-office admin.
The lesson is blunt. Route diversification, modal flexibility and market geography are competitive weapons. The companies that built them are hitting forecasts. Everyone else is watching their containers sit in a war zone.
Sources
- Kiwifruit, red meat tipped for strong season but Middle East conflict casts shadow (2026-03-27)
- Exporters change plans as attacks close Middle East route (2026-03-02)
- NZ Kiwifruit Growers Set for Higher Returns Despite Risks (2026-04-07)
- What are New Zealand’s global supply chains being disrupted by the US-Iran conflict? (2026-03)
- Thousands of shipping containers filled with NZ exports caught up in Middle East conflict (2026-03-02)
- Kiwifruit positive amid Middle East turmoil (2026-03-27)
- A strait in crisis reveals our agricultural vulnerabilities (2026-03-17)