Golden lining for Bay's new coolstores

EXPANDING: Coolstore manager Mike McCauley (left) with Form Construction site manager Trevor Thompson at Trevelyan's new coolstore site. PHOTO/SUPPLIED.

Te Puke-based post-harvest company Trevelyan's Pack and Cool is building $3.5 million worth of new coolstore space to handle its share of a record kiwifruit crop from orchardists who are beginning to put the worst of the Psa crisis behind them.

Trevelyan's packed 8.1 million trays of kiwifruit this year and expects to pack 10.5 million trays in 2015. The company is forecasting handling 12.9 million trays in 2016 - with the bulk of that growth coming from new Gold3 (G3) kiwifruit production.

"I think we are so fortunate to have this capacity problem to solve now," said managing director James Trevelyan.

"Going back four years we didn't know what was ahead of us. We're in a volume business and it's been tough times, but we haven't laid anyone off. For the team, there's a real sense of relief and more certainty."

The company has 26 coolstores on its 20ha site on No 1 Rd, Te Puke, but is building another three new state-of-the-art coolstores and extending three more to cope with booming Gold3 production.

By March an additional 2784sq m of coolstore space will have been created to house fruit produced by Trevelyan's growers, said coolstore manager Mike McCauley. The new coolstores would hold about 800,000 trays of kiwifruit and bring Trevelyan's total capacity on site up to 7.5 million trays.

The concrete pad for one new coolstore was laid in 2010 in anticipation of a large harvest, but was put on hold when Psa, was first discovered that year.

"Thankfully this new variety, G3, is Psa-tolerant compared to its predecessor, Hort16A, which was highly susceptible," said Mr McCauley.

"Psa is now under control and orchardists have a large G3 crop coming on, which we're gearing up for.

"It's wonderful to see confidence flowing back into our industry again and for Trevelyan's to be able to make such a significant investment in new infrastructure."

Mr McCauley said work was also under way to upgrade one of Trevelyan's three export packhouses ahead of the 2015 packing season for G3.

Trevelyan's recent growth was attributable to its success in providing leading orchard gate returns for growers, and its reputation for operating a sustainable business based on LEAN manufacturing principles, he said.

"We're very committed to running an efficient, environmentally-friendly operation to help keep our overall running costs down.

"We'll be using a refrigerant in the new coolstores which has a lower global warming potential than other options available. We're also looking to reduce our power consumption by using Variable Speed Drives [VSD] on our compressors so our coolstores run more efficiently and our refrigeration gear suffers less wear and tear."