Newspaper Article 1994 – Warm weather ruins apples

Warm weather ruins apples

By Geoff Mercer
Staff reporter, Hastings

Unseasonally warm weather is hastening the break-down of apples stored at Enza Processors’ Hastings plant.

The Hastings plant normally relies on low winter temperatures to naturally store fruit outdoors. Twenty-five thousand tonnes of fruit are stored in bins.

Enza Processors national operations manager Richard Croad said the weather was providing management with a “challenge”.

“It is having an impact on (juice) recovery, but it’s hard to estimate how much we are losing.”

“We are trying to bring together a figure, but that’s difficult to do.”

Mr Croad said he would like overnight temperatures to drop, “but we can’t magic that up.

“It’s just one of those things. We have just got to manage and keep a close eye on things.”

Mr Croad who moved to Hastings from Nelson in March, said from what he had been told this year was the worst people had experienced in terms of fruit loss from warm conditions.

Enza Processors had systems in place to eliminate fruit which had gone beyond food grade from being processed.

Fruit was stacked at the Coventry Rd factory according to when it was received and in different varieties to help minimise losses. Some varieties kept longer than others.

It would be early August before the backlog of fruit was cleared, he said.

The volume accepted for processing in Hastings was down 10 per cent on predictions, because of the March 2 hailstorm.

Volumes were also down in Nelson by 10 to 15 per cent and Otago by 35 per cent, he said.

In Otago more fruit was sold on the domestic market than had been anticipated, and in Nelson an overestimated crop combined with hail and greater than usual pack-out rates to reduce the volume submitted for processing. The board’s small juice extraction plant at Kaiapoi, north of Christchurch, had for the first time coped with the entire Canterbury crop submitted for process. The board’s plant juiced the apples and paid a Christchurch dairy factory to concentrate it, Mr Croad said.