A campaign to attract seasonal workers to the horticulture and viticulture industries in Nelson Tasman has recruited several hundred people, but many orchards in the top of the south are still looking for staff.
Royal Gala apples in crates during the harvest at Thomas Brothers packhouse in Riuwaka. Photo: RNZ / Samantha Gee
It was the sunshine, proximity to the beach, and promise of work that bought Lawrence Hill to Nelson.
He sold up his home in Ashburton, rented a caravan and moved north with his son Calais to work on an apple orchard in Riuwaka.
"I was sitting behind a desk, the second in charge storeman kinda thing and I just had enough of being inside really and enough of the dust and cows, it has just gone really mad down there in Mid Canterbury and I just came up here and I am originally from Rotorua so I am used to this kind of outlook and I love the beach."
He is a couple of weeks into his new job as a forklift driver with Thomas Brothers, a family-owned orchard that grow apples, kiwifruit and cherries.
"I'm just feeding the packhouse, making sure I keep up with them with all the fruit, they just pack it and I keep feeding it, all day long and I'm loving it."
Lawrence Hill moved to Nelson to take up a job as a forklift driver for Thomas Brothers, with hopes to stay in the region after the harvest ends. Photo: RNZ / Samantha Gee
Hill hopes the opportunities in the region will result in full-time work, once the harvest ends.
"This will probably end in May, but there's also pruning out there, there's thinning and there's kiwifruit. So you make a stand for yourself and you do well and you come to work all the time and it could lead into other work further on, it could actually give you a whole year's work and it's what I'm looking for."
Calais Hill has also found work at Thomas Brothers as a stacker during the harvest. He planned to study engineering at Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology in May and said the job would enable him to save money before then.
The harvest is well underway at the Thomas Brothers orchard, with thousands of Royal Gala apples being picked this week. But kiwifruit and logistics manager Steve Thomas said they were still in need of more staff.
Photo: RNZ / Samantha Gee
It is looking like a bumper crop, with great weather in the lead up to Christmas and good rain in February but no hail.
They currently have 200 employees on the books, with another 100 needed in the next couple of weeks - if they can be found.
"We need pickers, yes definitely, but also technical people from supervisors, quality control and forklift drivers, tractor drivers - the list is quite endless," Thomas said.
"Anyone that is keen to work the harvest will just walk straight into a job, there is something there for pretty much anybody."
The Pick Nelson Tasman campaign, which launched in January aims to match jobseekers with growers, filling some of the 1500 roles needed across the region during the harvest.
Boxes of apples in the Thomas Brothers coolstore. Photo: RNZ / Samantha Gee
New Zealand Apples and Pears labour and capability manager Erin Simpson said more than 2500 people had expressed interest and hundreds had been helped into employment, which was a huge success, given the current climate.
The industry was estimated to be 15 to 20 percent short of staff.
As a result, growers were prioritising their highest value varieties, to best utilise the available labour.
"What they're doing at the moment and have been doing for the last sort of six to eight weeks is rationalising the crops that they see the most value in and ensuring that they get them off in the best possible condition," Simpson said.
"Some of the varieties, perhaps some of our older varieties that we've been growing for a long period of time, we might do one or two picks on those rather than three or four like we normally would."
Simpson said the full impact of staff shortages on this year's apple harvest, would not be known until mid-year.
