Overview
Mr Apple grows, packs and exports apples from Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, and sells them to customers around the world under its own brand. It controls each step itself, from orchards around Napier, Hastings and Central Hawke's Bay to its own packhouses, coolstores and bin stores. Machines scan every apple outside and inside, and each one is still checked by hand before it goes into a Mr Apple box. Alongside classic varieties such as Braeburn, its range includes the trademarked Dazzle and Posy apples. Mr Apple was formed in 2001, when the country's two largest apple growers merged after apple exporting was deregulated, and it is based in Whakatu, Hawke's Bay.
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Simplify's take
What believers are saying
- Faster sales: Scales reported about 7% of Mr Apple's export crop unsold in August 2026, versus 18% a year earlier.
- Seasonal thinning pay: Mr Apple's full-time Hawke's Bay thinners earn NZ$23.95 hourly, November to December, plus piece-rate opportunities.
- Truck drivers stay local: Mr Apple's Hastings-based class 5 drivers make no overnight trips during the January-to-July 2027 season.
What critics are saying
- Weather trims sellable fruit: in May 2026 Scales forecast a 77% Mr Apple packout rate, below 2025, after weather events.
- Concentrated markets: Asia and the Middle East should take about 91% of parent Scales' 2026 horticulture fruit sales.
- Thinning is hard physical work: Mr Apple's seasonal thinners work outdoors in varied weather, on ladders and uneven orchard ground.
What makes Mr Apple unique
- Mr Apple exports at national scale: it ships 25% of New Zealand's apple crop, according to its own apples page.
- Harvest staffing has its own leader: Mr Apple's Recognised Seasonal Employer programme head oversees Pacific workers' logistics and pastoral care.
- Mr Apple sits inside a listed agribusiness: parent Scales Corporation trades on New Zealand's NZX exchange and owns Scales Logistics.
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