New Zealand grows some of the world’s best fruit in some of the world’s windiest farmland. The Roaring Forties hit both islands all year, the Canterbury nor’wester arrives hot and fast, and the Bay of Plenty’s kiwifruit blocks sit on coastal plains with nothing between them and the Tasman. For New Zealand growers, windbreak netting is standard orchard equipment: ~100 gsm knitted HDPE at 50% porosity, standing 1–1.5 times canopy height, protecting a zone about ten times its height downwind. Here is the New Zealand spec, built around the crop that needs it most.
No major orchard crop hates wind like kiwifruit. The vine grows fast and soft: new shoots snap in gusts that an apple tree ignores, and the big leaves act as sails that whip the canopy until stems rub and fruit marks. Later in the season, wind rubbing fruit against cane and wire downgrades the crop from export class — and kiwifruit economics live and die on export grade. The Bay of Plenty industry learned this decades ago, which is why mature blocks there run shelter as a system: living shelter belts for the long term, and knitted windbreak netting for the years while that shelter grows, for new plantings, and for the exposed rows a hedge cannot cover. Netting installs in days, works the same afternoon, and asks nothing from the soil or the water table.
New Zealand’s wind is not one problem but several. Bay of Plenty and Gisborne grow kiwifruit and citrus on exposed coastal plains — salt-laden onshore winds add leaf burn to mechanical damage, so coastal blocks spec heavier and replace on a tighter cycle. Hawke’s Bay and Nelson run apples, pears and vineyards where spring winds hit blossom and young fruit — the damage is fruit rub and set loss more than breakage. Canterbury faces the nor’wester: hot, dry, fast, arriving with little warning — windbreak there protects irrigation efficiency as much as trees. The shared spec across all three: a porous knitted barrier that steals wind speed without building turbulence, sized to the crop and the block. The physics of why 50% porosity beats a solid wall is in our windbreak porosity guide.
The specification we ship to New Zealand: ~100 gsm, 50% porosity, 100% virgin HDPE with UV stabilization, knitted to your height and run length. Height comes from the canopy — at least tree height, typically 1–1.5× for orchard duty, because the protected zone scales with net height (roughly 10H downwind). Placement runs 2–3 m off the first windward row: close enough to protect from the boundary, far enough that the fabric never whips the trees it protects. For kiwifruit specifically, the years that pay are the establishment years — young vines on new blocks get netted shelter from day one, while the long-term shelter belt grows up around them. Block layout detail is in the orchard windbreak guide.
New Zealand growers often frame this as a choice between planting a shelter belt and hanging a net. In practice the two run on different clocks. A living shelter belt — poplar, willow or native species — is the long-term answer, but it takes five to seven years to reach working height, competes with the crop for water and roots along its whole length, and needs trimming labor every season. Netting works the day it goes up. The pattern that performs best on NZ blocks: net the new planting immediately so the vines establish under protection, grow the living belt around the perimeter for the long term, and keep netting permanently on the spots a hedge cannot reach — the awkward gap rows, the boundary beside the neighbor’s paddock, the block extension planted ahead of the next belt. Where ground is too valuable to give to a hedge row at all, netting is simply the whole answer.
A concrete example from our export record: a 100 gsm agricultural windbreak program shipped to New Zealand in January 2025, spec’d for orchard wind protection on a kiwifruit block. That order shows the standard NZ pattern — ordered in early summer, knitted to the block’s run lengths, shipped as bales for contractor installation. New Zealand buyers tend to be precise about two things: UV package (the ozone-thinned southern sun is hard on plastics) and delivery timing against the growing season. Both are routine for us: the UV stabilizer is dosed per batch at the resin stage, and production runs 25–35 days after deposit.
OMB Textiles is a knitted HDPE netting manufacturer in Changzhou, China — founded in 2003, supplying windbreak, bird, hail and shade netting to orchard contractors and distributors across New Zealand, Australia and Europe. For New Zealand programs: MOQ 2 tons with mixed heights and lengths in one container, 40’HQ loading 14–15 tons, production 25–35 days after deposit, plus 4–6 weeks freight. The biosecurity question comes up in every first NZ inquiry: netting is a clean, factory-packed industrial textile — no soil, no plant material — and clears New Zealand’s biosecurity as routine goods. Samples are free, you cover the courier. Send your block dimensions, region, crop and destination port via the contact page or WhatsApp — we reply within 24 hours with a height and GSM recommendation plus a container plan. The full range is on the windbreak net product page, and installation detail is in the windbreak installation guide.
50% is the working standard: it cuts wind speed roughly in half across the protected zone without creating the turbulence a solid barrier would drop into the canopy. Kiwifruit’s soft growth and large leaves need exactly that filtered airflow, not a dead-calm pocket.
At least the intended canopy height, and 1–1.5 times it for good measure — the protected zone runs about ten times the net height downwind, so a 4 m net shelters roughly 40 m of block. Young vines grow into the protection; a net bought too short gets outgrown in two seasons.
Coastal salt wind works the fabric harder than inland air, so coastal blocks should spec the heavier end and inspect edges seasonally. With UV-stabilized virgin HDPE and storm-season checks, the net gives multi-year service; the UV package, not the postcode, is what we control — and we dose it per batch.
No — and we say so plainly because buyers ask. Frost protection is a different problem (cold air drainage and radiation), solved with different tools. A windbreak stops damaging wind; it does not warm a block. If frost is your concern, ask us and we will point you at the right approach rather than sell you the wrong net.
Yes — mixed-product containers are standard. A block that needs wind shelter plus bird or hail protection can take all three in one 2-ton-minimum shipment, each product labeled and packed separately.
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