Kiwifruit giant EastPack to spend $40m on tech upgrades

Hamish Simson, chief executive of EastPack, says the company is investing almost $40m of technology ahead of the next harvest. Photo/Carmen Hall

One of the Bay's major employers is pumping millions of dollars into new technologies ahead of the kiwifruit harvest, which provides thousands of seasonal jobs in the region.

EastPack chief executive Hamish Simson said the company was installing the country's largest kiwifruit grader at Te Puke, alongside the latest camera grading technology.

The company packed 40 million trays across its seven plants last year, up from 33 million trays the season before.

The cost of the investment was approaching $40 million.

"We have the super grader at Washer Rd which is a large proportion of that investment, with infrastructure either side around cooling and storage."

The super grader had cutting-edge features including Near Infra-Red technology which had made tremendous advancements in recent times and was used with great success last season.

The technology could look inside the fruit and assess it for quality.

A new form of camera grading technology, called Spectrim, would also be used at some of its sites.

"It's the next generation of camera grading.

"In a nutshell, our growers get a better pack out per bin and more in every tray, and for us, we get to pack more trays from the same volume coming in."

EastPack expected to employ 2800 packing staff this season.

Seeka chief executive Michael Franks said the kiwifruit company would hire more than 3000 seasonal workers this season.

Last season the company brought in a record 32.4 million trays, it built coolstores and would move to its new headquarters at Seeka 360 in the coming weeks, he said.

DMS Progrowers chief operating officer Derek Masters said it would employ more than 600 staff at its sites in Te Puna and Te Puke on par with last year.

The company had built additional coolstores and canopies on both sites while a further two coolstores would be constructed later this year to prepare for the 2018 season, he said.

Trevelyan's Pack and Cool human resource manager Jodi Johnstone said it started recruitment in January and expected to employ about 1260 staff during peak harvest, similar to last year.