Strong, ongoing growth has given family-run fresh produce business Kapiris Bros an opportunity for expansion, with a new facility close to the Melbourne Market showcasing the company’s vertical integration.
“The wholesale market is one of our distribution channels, we wanted to be close to the new market site so that we could easily transport produce back and forth,” Kapiris Bros Sales and Marketing Director Steve Tsakoumakis says during a tour of the facility in March 2016.
“We also saw an opportunity to develop a facility that offered us more efficient integration across our product lines, and room for further expansion in the future.”
The state-of-the-art, 4200 square metre facility was opened in August 2015 and includes seven cool rooms with 1080 pallet capacity, a dispatch area of 204 pallets, and has a total storage capacity within the facility of 1214 pallets. It also features a sophisticated chiller room and future fumigation areas, with the administration and management offices housed on the second floor.
“It’s great being able to go from office work upstairs, to hands-on quality control and management on the floor, to the wholesale market across the road,” Mr Tsakoumakis says, adding that the entire site is actually 11,800 square metres, “so we also have room to expand in the future.”
The facility is a hive of activity throughout the day and evening, with some staff coming in during the early hours for deliveries, pick-ups, packing and quality control, and others coming in during more standard office hours.
Downstairs, the packing floor space takes up 1500 square metres, organised based on the produce being sorted – with main lines of tomatoes, capsicums and rockmelons. Both the tomatoes and capsicums are processed on impressive flow wrapping and bagging lines that have the ability to pack one-kilogram punnets, six-pack trays and tri-colour capsicums, as well as bags of various shapes and sizes.
“You can set the specifications for packaging and weight on each line before you begin the packaging process, and then just feed the tomatoes or capsicums onto the machine,” Mr Tsakoumakis says.
“We have people inspecting the produce as it goes along the line. So it gets checked, then automatically weighed by the machine and packaged up, before passing through a metal detector to meet Safe Quality Food standards.”
On the day of the tour, Mr Tsakoumakis points out tomatoes being processed on one of the machines, as they are washed (for a second time), then sorted according to weight and packing specifications. He points out the control panel for changing these details, highlighting the ease and efficiency of the process.
Workers on the floor are gathered at various points, inspecting produce to meet Kapiris Bros high quality standards, and there are designated areas for any produce that doesn’t make the cut.
“The tomatoes and capsicums that don’t pass our quality control tests are all used in some way. We have a lot of farmers that come and get them for their animals, and they love it – especially with the hay shortage at the moment, it’s great,” Mr Tsakoumakis says.
“We are really committed to being an environmentally responsible company, and this is one way to do that.”
Beyond the packing and grading area is a long hallway for the storage cool rooms, which are organised according to the type of produce and whether it is waiting to be packed or ready to be picked up by a customer.
“In keeping with the company’s values of being socially and environmentally responsible, we’ve used state-of-the-art energy efficient materials and equipment, including the cool-room systems,” Mr Tsakoumakis explains.
At the end of this hallway is the arrivals area, complete with the chiller room and future fumigation areas.
“The chiller room is great because it gives us a way to quickly and efficiently lower the core temperature of produce when it arrives if we need to,” Mr Tsakoumakis says.
“For instance, with tomatoes, if we get a delivery straight off the truck and need to store them in the cool room, we can put them in here and make sure the core temperature in each box is at its optimum temperature so we can extend the shelf life of the produce and not compromise the quality. “
He says a lot of other companies in the industry outsource some of these processes; so having a facility that allows Kapiris Bros to do it all gives them a huge advantage.
“We have more control over the quality of our produce, from when it’s delivered to us from our farms through to when consumers purchase it,” he says.
Upstairs, the office is filled with natural light from windows, and open cubicles that allow staff to easily talk to one another.
“It’s great having all the teams in the one place,” Mr Tsakoumakis says, “we can really see what’s going on in all areas of the business, and work together to provide the best produce and service for all our customers.”
