Author: Chris Robinson

HGA Field Days and AGM

22-23 June 2024, Canterbury

Saturday, 22nd June 2024

Orchard 1 Jenny and Mark Harris, Cust/Rangiora – grows a variety of cultivars, trialling new varieties and a small processing facility.

Orchard 2 Sarah and Malcolm Shore, Cust/Rangiora – more than 6000 hazelnuts with some interplanted walnuts.

Orchard 3 Ann Joseph, Lincoln – develops and sells specialty hazelnut products.

AGM, 3-5pm, The Lounge, Rolleston Community Centre, Rolleston

Dinner, 7pm, Rolleston

Sunday, 23rd June 2024

Orchard 4 To be confirmed

Orchard 5 Bronwyn Jeffs, Prebbleton – a 300-tree orchard pruned to an unusual standard.

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Snippets

A short history of Agri Australis/Ferrero in Australia.

The Group has farms in Chile, Argentina, Georgia and Serbia, and in 2011 began prospecting for a suitable site in Australia. Agri Australis bought two farms, Dellapool and Arrambee, in 2013 and hazelnut plantings started in 2014 with the millionth tree planted in 2018. They expected to harvest around 5000t from the 2000Ha.

There is limited information about what went wrong, but the area is considered semi-arid, and despite good irrigaition, the hot summers were perhaps too hot. For more information, check out

Australian Financial Reviews “Chocolate maker abandons $70m Ferrero Rocher nut orchards” (23.10.23)

Australian Rural and Regional News “Ferrero shuts down hazelnut projects” (2.11.23)

ABC Rural “Ferrero Group, the company behind Nutella and Ferrero Rocher to stop growing hazelnuts in Australia” (15.11.23)

Meanwhile, in Turkey, the crop from their 2023 harvest is estimated at 600,000T. This is lower than the initial Turkish estimate of 718,000T. Dry weather during the nut development stage in spring is blamed. Read more at freshplaza.com.

The Commodity Board is reporting some jiggery-pokery with the pricing, with the price of hazels increasing sharply, while demand in Europe is still low. Read more at commodity-board.com/what-is-happening-in-the-turkish-hazelnut-market-will-prices-fall//

Australian Hazelnut Trip – August 2023

by Pete Barrowclough, President HGANZ

In July 2023, Lincoln Agritech Ltd, of which I was CEO at the time, came across a request for Expressions Of Interest (EOI) to provide hazelnut research to the Australian hazelnut industry. This EOI was sent out by Agrifutures Australia which is a Rural Development Corporation. This EOI was open to all Australian and New Zealand research organisations. Lincoln Agritech Ltd submitted an EOI on the basis of its expertise in precision (sometimes called digital) agriculture. We were invited to a two day workshop at Albury on the border of NSW and Victoria. Dr Armin Werner and I attended the workshop. Around 15 Australian research providers also attended the workshop including universities, and state research organisations. Basil Baldwin was also there, who is seen as a guru for the Australian industry, having completed his PhD many years ago on Hazelnut growing (a link to his thesis is provided later in this Newsletter). He is Australia’s version of our own Murray Redpath. The workshop was broken up into themes that had been prioritized from the Australian Hazelnut 2030 Strategic Blueprint prepared in May 2022 (see link below), and research providers expressed interest in the themes that they could provide expertise for. The themes were:

  1. Promote efficient and sustainable production systems
  2. Benchmarking (improve systems through technology transfer and innovation)
  3. Build a vibrant and profitable hazelnut industry (explore and develop methods, processes or technologies; technology transfer).
Continue reading Australian Hazelnut Trip – August 2023

Recommended Reading

Basil and Jean Baldwin are Australian hazelnut growers, with a 500 tree orchard at Forest Reefs, Blayney, NSW. Basil is an agronomist and published his PhD thesis in 2015.

Called “The Growth and Productivity of Hazelnut Cultivars (Corylus avellana L.) in Australia“, his thesis assessed the growth of 26 cultivars grown at 5 different sites, two each in NSW and Victoria and one in Tasmania. (Unfortunately for New Zealand growers, the cultivar “Whiteheart” was only planted at the site in Tasmania.)

The thesis is chock-full of valuable information. The literature review brings together what is known about hazelnuts, and discusses the effect of climate and soil, factors which influence growth and production, and the attributes and relative merits of of various cultivars (there’s a helpful characteristics and merit guide for cultivars in Appendix A).

Continue reading Recommended Reading

Introducing the HGANZ Exec

My name is Christine Robinson and I am the new Exec hired by the Committee.

My job is to provide administrative services to HGANZ, things like taking the Minutes of the meetings, sending out emails or finding information on something as directed by the Committee. I will also take over creating the quarterly Newsletter, leaving Paul more time for his hazelnuts. In addition, my job it to apply for grant money to progress the aims of HGANZ. The Committee has some big goals for the industry, and I’ll take on the basic research and writing parts, allowing them to do the thinking and polishing, all while continuing with their day jobs.

I have a very old PhD (2005) in plant diseases, but children and my husband’s career derailed my plans. HGANZ gives me the opportunity to get back into plants and science and keep my brain alive. Hopefully I will meet many of you over the next year or so, as I will help organise Field Days. Until then, here is a picture of me with my dog – he enjoys eating hazelnuts too.