She believed the theft would have occurred at night when it would be least obvious.

The impact had been huge, she said. There was the loss of earnings, which she was not willing to disclose other than to say it was “considerable”, but also the lack of employment for the pickers for those days that were lost.

“There’s a ripple effect. Our gate sales and the farmers’ markets will have empty shelves, so the customers are disappointed, and the workers and packhouses and us, our family, are also impacted.”

The company lost 70 per cent of last year’s crop in February last year, during Cyclone Gabrielle, “so we really are in survival mode trying to recover here”.

“Given what has happened, we’ve actually started picking what we can of the next crop now, just to ensure we have some available,” she said.

It was not the first time Hirst had been struck by berry theft. In December 2021, a truckload of strawberries was stolen from a different site.

Fruit on trees could not be insured, so no claim could be made for the losses, Hirst said.

There are cameras and lights on the property, but the thieves managed to avoid being filmed.

Hirst said she was now purchasing more cameras and lights.

Police had been informed and “they will be very interested in hearing from anyone offered fruit”.

“We are not the only grower to be hit by theft. There’s possibly someone doing this to order or making a business out of it,” she said.

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