45 million unauthorised trays a year is no longer just a legal problem for Zespri

The number that changes everything

For years Zespri treated illegal Chinese plantings of its SunGold variety as an intellectual property problem to be litigated, audited and eventually contained. That framing no longer holds. Zespri chief executive Jason Te Brake says the company now estimates around 45 million trays of G3 SunGold are grown in China annually by growers with no licence to cultivate it.

That figure now exceeds Zespri’s own China sales of roughly 40 million trays. Put another way, there is now more unauthorised Zespri-style fruit growing on Chinese soil than the legitimate article the company ships in. This is happening in a market that delivered $1.4 billion in revenue in 2025-2026, Zespri’s single most valuable market.

Why the seasons make it worse

The timing is what turns this from irritant to existential. New Zealand’s season runs through to roughly September, when fruit quality starts to slip. Chinese-grown G3 is available from September to March. Stitch those two windows together and consumers in cities like Shanghai now have access to gold kiwifruit for 12 months of the year, with the local product at a lower price.

Zespri’s premium has always rested on being authentic, seasonal and consistently high quality. Two of those three legs are weakening at once. If late-season New Zealand fruit arrives in September at reduced quality, just as fresh Chinese-grown G3 comes on at 60 to 70 percent of the price, the case for paying a premium erodes at precisely the wrong moment.

How concentrated the bet really is

The exposure is severe because SunGold is not a line in Zespri’s China business, it is the China business. Zespri’s March 2025 Kiwiflier reported record Greater China sales of 54 million trays in 2024, with SunGold making up 88 percent of China volume. In the 2023/24 season SunGold was returning $11.59 per tray to growers, and Organic SunGold $14.93. Those returns are what the rogue crop is undercutting.

The problem traces back to 2016, when a grower illegally took SunGold clippings to China. Plantings then spread across multiple provinces, with Sichuan a particular hotspot. To put scale in context, China grows about 800 million trays of kiwifruit on 220,000 hectares, against New Zealand’s roughly 200 million trays. The unauthorised G3 is a sliver of China’s total output, but it competes directly with Zespri’s premium product in the same aisles.

The courts aren’t keeping up

Zespri has won cases. In one significant IP dispute, a Chinese defendant growing 260 hectares of illegal SunGold in Hubei was ordered to pay NZ$1.8 million. The company has also run a verification of origin audit programme since 2020 to stop China-origin fruit sneaking into Zespri packaging.

But enforcement at the margin has not stopped the aggregate. Each court win removes a few hundred hectares while more plantings quietly reach maturity. The 45 million tray estimate is the proof: litigation has not bent the curve.

Fight, or join them

That leaves the harder option, some form of commercial engagement with Chinese growers to bring year-round supply under the Zespri umbrella. It has been floated before and grower-owners have baulked. An earlier proposal for a tightly controlled trial won 70.5 percent support, short of the 75 percent threshold, while attaching the Zespri brand to trial fruit drew just 64.1 percent. Growers are genuinely split between defending the brand’s integrity and refusing to cede the market entirely.

The lesson beyond kiwifruit

For anyone running a business built on a proprietary product advantage, this is the cautionary tale. A world-class variety, decades of plant breeding, and 18-year plant variety rights count for less than you’d hope once the product is replicated at industrial scale in a market where enforcement is slow, costly and incomplete. Zespri’s brand, distribution and quality standards still command a premium, and the $1.4 billion business is not about to collapse. But the structural pressure is intensifying and the company’s room to manoeuvre is narrowing with every season the rogue crop grows. The decision Zespri’s growers keep deferring is not going to get easier.

Sources

• Zespri faces tough call as China-grown gold kiwifruit surge (2026-07-26)
• Zespri Kiwiflier March 2025 – Industry hits major milestone (2025-03)
• Zespri claims win in China IP case
• Zespri says rogue growing of smuggled NZ gold kiwifruit in China surges
• Zespri’s warning over China production of pirated NZ bred Gold fruit