New Zealand Fruit Picking Season Calendar

Australia has the Harvest Trail, a government programme with its own job board. New Zealand has nothing quite like it. Growers and packhouses hire directly, and a lot of vineyard work goes through labour contractors: in Marlborough, MPI's workforce data shows contractors doing most of the seasonal tasks. The nearest thing to one national listing is PickNZ, an initiative led by Horticulture New Zealand, where growers post harvest, packhouse, thinning and pruning jobs.

The government's part is information. Work and Income publishes a seasonal work calendar, month by month and district by district, and it is the backbone of the tool above. Kiwifruit is the one crop with its own organised help. In the Bay of Plenty, NZ Kiwifruit Growers runs the seasonal labour programme and puts out the Little Green and Gold Book, a free guide to where the jobs are, when workers are needed and what each role involves.

Whoever you end up working for, you sign a written employment agreement before you start. PickNZ's advice is to photograph its first page, with the business name and address on it, and to keep your own record of the days and hours you work. It sounds fussy. It is the evidence you need later, both if the pay goes wrong and for the extension visa.

The simplest route is not to move. Central Otago and the Bay of Plenty both have something on this calendar in every month of the year: Central Otago by switching crops, the Bay of Plenty by switching jobs on the same kiwifruit vines. Staying put saves fuel, and it saves the week or two it takes to learn how a new orchard does things.

If you do move, move with the fruit. Cherries in Central Otago over December and January, north to Hawke's Bay or Nelson Tasman for apples from February, then the Bay of Plenty for kiwifruit pruning from June. Either way that is three regions and a Cook Strait crossing, so price the ferry into the plan.

Aim to arrive a couple of weeks before the dates in this calendar, while growers are still putting their crews together. Turn up in the middle of a harvest and the crews are set, the beds in the nearby towns are taken, and you pay for a room while you wait for someone to leave.

Public transport doesn't go where the fruit is. Some growers and packhouses offer worker accommodation, as PickNZ's region pages point out. Everywhere else you need your own wheels, and that cost decides whether a season pays. Whether buying beats renting for your dates is what the calculator in our buying a car guide works out.

The floor is simple. New Zealand's adult minimum wage is NZ$23.95 an hour, and it applies to working holidaymakers from their first hour. There is no casual loading and no award rate on top, so most orchard jobs pay the minimum or a little above it. The difference comes from piece rates.

NZ Apples & Pears describes how the piece works: pickers are paid per bin, thinners by the number of trees they thin. A fast picker on a good block earns well over the minimum. A slow one in the first week doesn't, and that is where the rule that protects you comes in. Piece rates or not, you have to earn at least the minimum wage for every hour you work. Divide what you earned in a pay period by the hours you worked in it. If that comes out under NZ$23.95, your employer owes you the difference.

Keep your own record of start and finish times, because a bin count doesn't show how long the day was. On a fixed-term seasonal job, your employer can add 8% holiday pay to each payslip instead of giving you leave, as long as that's agreed. If it isn't paid as you go, you're owed it when the job ends.

Then there is what comes off. Hand in an IR330 with your IRD number on your first day, or 45% of your pay goes to tax until it's sorted. If worker accommodation comes out of your wages, it has to be a reasonable cost for a room you agreed to in writing, so get the weekly figure on paper before you accept the job. What a week at the minimum wage leaves you after tax and the ACC levy is worked through in our New Zealand jobs guide.

One last thing. You are paid in New Zealand dollars, and at some point you will want that money at home. Doing it through a high-street bank is where a decent season quietly loses a few hundred dollars.

The work has to be planting, maintaining, harvesting or packing crops in horticulture or viticulture. Plant nurseries and food processing are named as not counting. The three months don't have to be continuous or with one employer, and you don't need a job offer to apply. You apply from inside New Zealand, while your working holiday visa is still current. You only ever get this visa once.

The evidence is the part to organise as you go: letters from employers, payslips and tax records. Ask each employer for a letter on your last day, while they still remember you. The application form is the INZ 1153, and Immigration New Zealand's page says you can post or courier it.

This is also where the calendar earns its keep. Three months is longer than most single harvests. Cherries peak for about two months, vintage runs two or three. So plan two jobs back to back, or pick a region like the Bay of Plenty or Central Otago, where the same employer can carry you from harvest into pruning.

It is physical work outdoors, so check your travel insurance covers manual labour before your first shift. Our insurance guide breaks down which policies do. The extension visa asks for medical insurance too, if your original working holiday visa required it.