One week into May and the weather has not been what we need at blossom time - high winds are not conducive to good pollination!
On Wednesday evening The English Apple Man made his first visit to Chris Browning's Cottage Farm Ltd at August Pitts Farm near Horsmonden in West Kent - The occasion; the annual NFU/BEST Spring Blossom Walk.
Below; Martyn Webber
This annual event is sponsored by the National Farmers Union (NFU) local branches organised in conjunction with Brenchley and East Sussex discussion group (BEST) - Martyn Webber NFU Group Secretary for Goudhurst and Paddock Wood Branches welcomed circa 80 visitors to August Pitts and introduced Chris Browning MD of Cottage Farms Ltd who has been responsible for building a 'state of the art' packing complex at August Pitts which opened in July 2014.
In view of the number of visitors, who were primarily interested in seeing the new packing facility, it was decided to 'skip' the planned walk in adjacent orchards; with 'gusts' of near gale force winds making walking far from easy, it was a popular decision!
Chris Browning explained we would not see any fruit being packed as the day's packing ended at 5pm; he then gave a short overview of the planning behind the construction of the packing facility.
"The facility was constructed on a design and build basis by ICA Construction and completed in 8 months.
Below; Chris Browning
The new site has a gross floor area of 43,000 sq ft with an additional 4,000 sq ft of office space on the first floor. In total there is 69,000 sq ft of buildings on site, including the previous cold stores. The site now has a cold-store capacity in excess of 1,500 pallet spaces.
The total investment was £3.3 million; £2.3 million on the building and £1 million on the Aweta pre-sizer.
Lighting is important on any packing site; LED lighting has been installed throughout the site with both daylight and movement sensors maximising the efficiency of energy use. In addition 216kw array of solar Photo Voltaic (PV) panels generate approximately 27% of the electricity consumed on site.
AWETA Presizer
The presizer has a potential throughput of 10 tonnes per hour - 300 bins (x 300kg) per day on a 10 hour shift.
The presizer sorts the incoming fruit by size, quality, colour and external defects using camera technology, it also detects internal defects using infra-red Inscan technology.
Fruit is moved around the presizer using 57,000 litres of water in 21 channels with full water filtration. The Filtration unit has Carbon, Sand, and Ultra violet filters to ensure the quality of the water for up to 12 months use. Chris Browning said the system delivers an 87% reduction in water use compared to the previous grading system.
In 'days gone by' grading lines would be heavily manned; today the use of technology has reduced the need for operatives. Just three personnel operate the Aweta presizer, with one in the control room, one fork lift truck driver delivering 'incoming bins' of fruit to the presizer and one fork lift truck driver removing the sorted bins back to a holding cold store.
This is possible as bins are automatically fed into the system and once the grader has sorted fruit into each category in a flume, it will automatically fill a bin when the right amount of fruit has gathered in flume. Full bins are 'bar coded' and transported automatically to a 'robot stacker' which stacks them on one of 12 'category positions' allowing the fork truck driver to simply pick up a stack and move it to the cold store.
Below left; Entry point to presizer - Below right; Aweta Presizer
Below left; Water flumes - Below right; Robot auto-stacker
Finally, a presizer report on each LOT (batch) is available at the end of each run (traceable to a grower and orchard). The information breaks down into; size and class, quality, weight and number of apples. This delivers full traceability for customer due diligence and enables the grower to accurately assess the performance of each variety/orchard.
The Packouse
The packhouse covers a floor area of 13,000 sq feet. Top Fruit (Apples & Pears) and Grapes are packed.
The packhouse operates with 50 - 90 staff per day depending on orders. The capacity is 9,000 cases; e.g. 108,000 individual packs per day on a 10 hour shift. Staff have 3 Ulma trayless flowrappers, 2 Newtec Polybaggers, 2 Loose lines, and 1 Standard Ulma flowrapper.
Below left; Ulma Flowrapper - Below right; Close up of flowrapper
Below left; Flowraps - Below right; British Apples flowrap
Below left; New Zealand apples held in chill store for prepacking - Below right; Tesco cases ready for dispatch
Tracebility is paramount in any modern packing operation and to make this easier, Freshware warehouse and packhouse software offering full barcode traceability will 'go live' within the next 4 weeks.
Before leaving August Pitts The English Apple Man took these pictures of a young Gala orchard in bloom
That is all for this week..........by next Friday (15th May) The English Apple Man will be in Malta on holiday.........
However - a report on the BIFGA annual Spring Farm Walk will be on-line by Friday evening!
Take care
The English Apple Man