The production of Kiwifruit

The Kiwifruit is cultivated above all in China, Spain, USA, Russia, South Africa and Italy.
The area dedicated to the kiwifruit worldwide is esteemed to be about 140,000 hectares (2011 data), with a strong tendency to increase thanks to the investments in China that ten years ago had only few thousands of hectares cultivated and now reach 65,000 hectares of areas cultivated with kiwifruit.
In 2010 the world production of kiwifruit was of 1,857,583 tons (source: IKO 2011), the 60% of which was absorbed by the market of fresh product and the 40% by the processing and canning industry for the production of kiwifruit-based drinks, kiwifruit juices, jelly beans, kiwifruit jams, canned fruits, but also by industries for the production of kiwifruit alcohol drinks.
The increase in the production of kiwifruit that we are experiencing at the moment has led the cultivation to represent the 24% of the world fruit production. The first five countries producers of kiwifruits are China (492.000 t), Italy (430.000 t), New Zealand (385.000 t), Chile (187.000 t) and Greece (79.000 t). These five countries producers of kiwifruit represent alone about 87% of the world production offer: the production of kiwifruit is therefore really centred.
Followin in the distance there are France, Greece, Iran, Japan, USA, Portugal and Spain (data updated at Dec 2012).
In 2008 the major world producer of kiwifruit was Italy, with an annual production of about 500,000 tons of high quality fruits, exported in more than 80 countries of the world, among which, since 2009, there is also China. China has outdone Italy in 2010 and in 2011, with a slightly higher production.
In Italy (in March 2013) almost 29,000 hectars of soil were cultivated with kiwifruit, about 80% of which were cultivated in the four regions of Lazio, Piemonte, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto.
In the Southern hemisphere of the world, the production of kiwifruit is centred mainly in New Zealand and Chile.
Excluding China, about 2/3 of the world production of kiwifruit is assigned to the exports.
The exports of kiwifruit worldwide have recently reached 1,2 million tons: the major countries exporters of kiwifruit are Italy, which exports about 70% of its production, the New Zealand, with the 90%, Chile, with more than 95%, Greece, with about the 50% and France with 35-40%.
Also California can be considered a world exporter country of kiwifruit, with a share that is equivalent to the 35% of the internal offer.
However, European countries absorb the major part of exports, the 78% (data from 2012).