Chestnut buyers delighted with the crumbs

By ELLEN READ

Every March, groups of Chinese students visit Cambridge with bags and a mission - collecting ripe chestnuts from roadside trees.

Now a Waikato company is set to capitalise on the international popularity of chestnuts by exporting products from 35 growers throughout the country.

In an old meatworks on the outskirts of Cambridge, the Kiwi Chestnut Co-Op Company is processing chestnuts into frozen crumbs, ready for markets from Canada to Auckland.

Most of the crumbs go to companies in Canada which turn them into a stuffing.

Serious chestnut growing got its start in the Waikato in the 1970s when tree crop enthusiasts began working on producing the perfect chestnut.

Today, half of Kiwi Chestnut's suppliers come from the Waikato.

Commercial growing began in 1988 when the Waikato Chestnut Marketing Association started, promoting chestnuts as the new kiwifruit. It managed to get enough people interested to start exporting the nuts to Australia.

The idea was to export them fresh and sell them directly to Australia's huge European and Asian migrant populations. But problems with storage and transport meant the chestnuts were rotten by the time they reached their buyers. New Zealand chestnuts earned a bad reputation and the market collapsed.

About five years ago, a group of growers decided the best way around New Zealand's isolation from its potentially huge markets in the Northern Hemisphere was to band together and manufacture a processed product in New Zealand.

Enter the Kiwi Chestnut Co-Op Company.

General manager Geoff Williamson trained as a microbiologist and was a manager at the Affco Horotiu plant for three years. When the Kiwi Chestnut Co-Op Company directors asked him to be the general manager, it was an easy decision, he said.

"It's a company with such huge potential."

He is keen on developing a domestic market, and says the firm is starting with restaurants.

"The thing is that chefs know all about chestnuts because a lot of them have been trained in Europe, so when we come to call they go, 'Oh great, chestnuts'."

The crumbs keep the distinctive kumara-style flavour of chestnuts, and are being made into everything from biscuits to chutneys.

There's even a company developing a recipe using the crumbs to make liquor, but Williamson won't talk about that as it is still in its development stage.

Some Machines around the factory are also being kept under wraps. "We've got two chestnut processing machines here that are unique in New Zealand. We developed them ourselves to produce the crumbs."

After decades of studying chestnuts, HortResearch scientist David Klinac doesn't need convincing of their benefits.

Klinac has done research and development work for Kiwi Chestnut.

He says apart from being "yummy", chestnuts qualify as a health food.

"They have an unusual combination of nutritional benefits. They're a bit of an oddity really.

"Chestnuts are a nut, but unlike a lot of other nuts it's not an oily nut.

"They have virtually no cholesterol or fat content so they're quite nutritionally good that way. They are in the same league as rice and eggs in terms of protein supply."

Klinac says the chestnuts being grown in orchards are not far removed from those which flourish on the side of the road.

"We can't import different strains of tree to improve our genetic lines for fear of these rather nasty bugs and diseases coming into the country.

"On the other hand we don't have any of the traditional pests that affect the rest of the industry. In the US, around 1900, virtually the whole industry was wiped out when a fungus called chestnut blight attacked their trees."

Most New Zealand growers are people who have converted lifestyle blocks.

Te Awamutu growers Nick and Ros Empson said chestnuts involved relatively low capital investment, and no spraying.

This was particularly important to Nick Empson, who has been sensitive to spray poisoning since his early 20s.

Being the first in, the Empsons have had to use trial and error to find the best way to grow. They grow just over 200 trees and look after 25 cows and sheep on the same land. But, Nick Empson says, if they had to do it again they would do it differently.

"Instead of planting the trees out in a paddock and trying to look after them, I'd grow the young trees separately in an area close together then I'd transplant them when they were old enough to withstand the mauling they get from the stock."

- NZPA