Kiwifruit and leaky buildings seem to have little in common but post-harvest company Apata Group has turned to the building industry for an innovative solution to a problem with labelling gold kiwifruit.
“The skin of SunGold kiwifruit becomes damp when it is removed from controlled atmosphere storage and the brand labels just wouldn't stick,” says Damian Young, Apata's operations general manager.
Damian Young, Apata's operations general manager, checks the temperature of SunGold fruit inside the newly enclosed grading area in the Kaimai pack house.
SunGold is held at around one degree in CA stores and when the fruit is taken to the packhouse for grading, labelling and packing, its exposure to the outside air temperature causes the fruit's surface to become damp.
“We had to find an answer as Zespri requires that 100 per cent of export fruit carries its brand label.”
Last year, fellow Bay of Plenty post-harvest company EastPack experimented with using a different kind of plastic to create a sticker-friendly microclimate.
Seeing leaky buildings covered in white plastic wrap was the inspiration Damian needed to come up with a potential solution for a much larger, commercial-scale trial in partnership with Zespri.
Apata contacted Charlie Baxter of A 1 Wrap Ltd, Tauranga to see if it was possible to enclose the bin tip and grading tables in the Apata Kaimai packhouse to create a new “controlled atmosphere” area in which to handle the fruit.
