Why One New Zealand Watermelon Cost Almost $70
Summer is just around the corner, but the temperature for June tells us that this month is already "hotter-than-average" (via Climate). And with the warmer weather, you might want to prepare a refreshing fruit salad for yourself or your loved ones. However, if you live in New Zealand, you might be stunned if you attempt an amazing way to use up a watermelon and use the leftover juicy pieces for your fruit salad. Shoppers in New Zealand are shocked that the price of watermelon is now hovering around $10 per kg, reporting that a smaller one had a price tag of $69.98 while a larger one came in at a whopping $102.25 (per Daily Mail). That sounds pretty unbelievable, but is it really unreasonable?
For example, The Garden Magazine reports that there are watermelons that are even more expensive, like Densuke, a Japanese watermelon grown on Hokkaido that is black in color, crisp, and very sweet with few seeds on the inside. The price of Densuke watermelons can reach up to $6,000, making it the world's most expensive watermelon. This melon also comes packaged with the certificate of origin, so the New Zealander price of a watermelon perhaps doesn't sound that steep after all. But why did the price of this beloved summer fruit increase so much?
Watermelons are expensive in New Zealand due to high supply chain costs
The NZ Herald reports that a shopper from Auckland was stunned after seeing watermelons priced at $100 (AUD) in the supermarket chain called Farro. But there's a good reason for the whopping price — the watermelons are shipped from Australia because there are none available in New Zealand. Due to high supply chain costs these days, the Aussie watermelons, which are also out of season and shipped by sea or air, are now very expensive in New Zealand as a result.
One shocked shopper, Megan Robinson, shared a picture of the watermelon with the accompanying price tag on Twitter, and commented that she "was thinking about fruit salad but changed my mind now that watermelons have broken the $100 mark."
Twitter users shared Robinson's disbelief, with one user saying, "Who the hell would even think of paying that for a watermelon? Yikes!" Another user wanted to know something more important and asked, "are they full of gold coins?" With rising food prices that are about to get even worse, we can also reiterate the shoppers' growing frustration — Yikes!