Hawke’s Bay apple harvest: 30,000 Cyclone Gabrielle-damaged bins returned to growers

Evergreen Foundation's Annabel Mason (front) next to one of the fixed bins alongside Rockit's Dennis Paxie (left), Dillon Green and Tumu Timbers' James Truman, at a Rockit apple orchard near Hastings. Photo / Paul Taylor

A mammoth project to fix and clean nearly 30,000 fruit bins damaged in last year’s cyclone has been completed in time for the apple harvest.

Hawke’s Bay grows almost 70 per cent of the country’s apples and this year’s picking season has just begun and will run through to April.

Growers have received a boost for the harvest due to a project restoring fruit bins damaged in the floods of last February.

That project, in which 29,200 silt-covered bins were cleaned and fixed at no cost to growers, ran for about a year.

An apple bin atop a roof in Pākōwhai after the flooding. Photo / NZME

The project was a partnership between Tumu Group, charity Evergreen Foundation and the Government.

“The project pretty much started straight [after the cyclone]. By late February, we had bins coming in,” Tumu Timbers operations manager Andrew Cranswick said.

A Tumu site in Hastings was used for storing, cleaning and fixing the bins and a neighbour also lent his property for the cause.

Cranswick said the idea came about following a conversation with NZ Apples and Pears.

“[The bins] were a reminder of what happened and they were also a challenge that the growers actually couldn’t deal with at the time.

“We sent out communications to all the growers about the project and they just contacted us and said, ‘hey we’ve got these bins can you come and pick them up’.”

He said some bins were “too far gone” but if they had a couple of broken boards “we would whip those boards off and put a new board on”.

They also water-blasted and sanitised all the bins and sent them back to the growers.

The Evergreen Foundation, a charity helping Cyclone Gabrielle-hit communities, provided $275,000 for the project on top of $400,000 in Government grants.

Teams of up to eight people were working on the project at its height.

Evergreen Foundation trustee Brendan O’Sullivan, who is also a Tumu Group director, said it was a big help for both the horticulture sector and the region’s clean-up.

“It’s thanks to our Cyclone Relief Fund donors who have enabled the foundation to activate this support to our local growers, just in time for picking season.

“Hitting this number of bins is a huge result.”

The project helped save Hawke’s Bay growers up to $3 million, which would have been the cost to replace that number of bins.

Gary Hamilton-Irvine is a Hawke’s Bay-based reporter who covers a range of news topics including business, councils, breaking news and cyclone recovery. He formerly worked at News Corp Australia.