Kiwifruit Logistics Company, TKL Handles Enough Kiwifruit To Feed Everyone In India And China Twice Over!

On average 6,771,600,000 pieces of kiwifruit fruit is handled by TKL Logistics Limited each kiwifruit season, prior to being exported around the world.

TKL Logistics Limited (formally Tauranga Kiwifruit Logistics) has played a critical part in the early success of the kiwifruit season. TKL coordinates the arrival and dispatch of all Zespri branded kiwifruit through ports around New Zealand to key international markets.

TKL is a company owned by New Zealand post-harvest companies and contracted by them to operate road transport services and port logistics. TKL transports pallets of kiwifruit from packhouses to their site at the Mount Maunganui wharf where they operate a 5200-pallet coolstore to both facilitate the loading of specialised reefer vessels and for consolidation of cargo for container loading.

Also, TKL has been contracted by Zespri since 2006, to provide professional services relating to the planning and loading of ships.

In the Bay of Plenty, TKL’s contracted transport fleet consists of 90 trucks of which 2/3rds are container trucks and 1/3rd curtain-sider, enabling TKL to handle 200 containers a day on average, equating to an average of 4,000 pallets of kiwifruit daily. The Curtainsider fleet also transports around 3500 pallets of Kiwifruit a day to the Port of Tauranga. With the shipping pressures of this season, TKL has handled more than 250 truckloads in a 24-hour period – all without incident – checked and safely loaded on to the ships. And the company has loaded two charter vessels at a time on some days – all of which have contributed to new loading records.

TKL Chief Executive, Ian Mearns, stated “We’ve seen an increase in volume this season and hearing that the total is getting close to 7 billion pieces of kiwifruit is astonishing. It is great to be part of the process and industry that sees our national fruit delivered to consumers around the world”.

Last week the charter operation managed to load and dispatch six vessels in 8 days and the container team managed to send 1014 containers out to coolstores to load in only 4.5 days. “So far this season TKL has loaded over 4500 containers and 14 Charter ships and its only effectively six weeks into the season. The intensity of the season continues with 1200 containers and four charter vessels to load next week.”

Innovation has been key for TKL’s growth. The company’s bespoke logistics application is an integrated software solution. “The app is used to dispatch and track our transport fleet and pallets alike, while at the same time sending detailed information to coolstores as to what is to be loaded in a specific container It also allows us to use GPS to track real time location of trucks and share this with our customers. The application also handles all the administration functions relating to our accounting systems” explains Ian.

While TKL is based in Tauranga, its operations are also undertaken in Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Gisborne, Nelson and Motueka. “Anywhere kiwifruit is packed for export in New Zealand, TKL is responsible for the logistics of getting it from the packhouse onto vessels.” Says Ian.

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