Precision chilling ensures every punnet is juicy, sweet and fresh.
You know summer’s just around the corner when the first punnets of juicy red strawberries start appearing on the supermarket shelves.
With them comes the promise of sunshine, long warm days and good times.
“Strawberries are all about happiness – a big, tasty strawberry just makes you feel good,” says Lynda Ashby of Matakana Berry Co.
A strawberry grower for more than 40 years, she says it’s a privilege to be involved in an industry that’s “all about putting smiles on people’s faces thanks to our beautiful strawberries”.
While Kiwis know they’re going to get a mouthful of deliciousness every time they bite into one of the iconic berries, what they’re not aware of is the meticulous process that keeps them at their best on supermarket shelves.
Gone are the days when strawberry growers loaded their fruit into trucks, waved it off and didn’t give it another thought, says Ashby, whose family business supplies around 30,000 punnets a day to Woolworths during the strawberry season.
“Now we monitor it all the way to the consumer to make sure they are getting fresh, quality berries. And the key to that quality is chilling them.
Matakana Berry Co picks seven days a week once the weather warms through until the end of the season in December, choosing the reddest, juiciest strawberries each day.
“We pick as soon as day breaks and finish by lunchtime – we don’t want the heat of the day to affect quality,” explains Ashby. “We pick with a stalk because we believe that adds to quality and shelf life. The added benefit of that is they are great for dipping in chocolate without getting your fingers messy!”
The strawberries are put straight into a chiller where they are cooled to 2°C to lock in the goodness, says Ashby. Once at that temperature they are quickly but carefully hand-packed, then go into a dispatch chiller. The 2°C temperature is maintained until they leave the farm the next morning at 3.30am.
“It’s a very precise procedure,” says Ashby, who personally sees off the trucks every morning.
The fruit is transported in temperature-controlled trucks on pallets containing sensors that monitor the temperature throughout the whole journey to distribution centres and then to Woolworths stores all over the country.
“Once upon a time we’d put the strawberries on the truck and have no idea what happened to them once it left. Being able to monitor them like this is quite a new thing, and it’s good to know that the quality is maintained. That’s very important to us, as it is to Woolworths, and it’s what customers expect.”
Such innovations are a world away from when Ashby’s first farm job in 1981 sparked her strawberry passion – and led to meeting husband Grant, whose family had grown berries since the 1950s.
“In the early days all fruit was auctioned and it was a race to get your berries to the front of the auction queue,” recalls Ashby. “I look back now and wonder how we managed, as there wasn’t a chiller in sight.”
Ten years ago they moved to Omaha, north of Auckland, which is an ideal spot to grow strawberries thanks to its great soil and a microclimate that includes lots of sunshine.
While Ashby works seven days a week overseeing the packhouse and marketing, son Matt is now in charge of growing the fruit from the healthiest possible plants and looking into new ways of getting top-quality strawberries to customers.
“Strawberry growing is in his blood – he grew up on the farm and was loading trucks and driving tractors from the age of nine. In 2018 Matt went to Europe to see what was happening in the strawberry growing scene and he came back with a lot of new ideas that seemed scary at first but are normal practice for us now. You have to keep moving forwards.”
Back in the ‘80s when the Ashbys first started out, 95% of their fruit was exported. Today, it’s exclusively Kiwi customers who get to enjoy their tasty strawberries.
“Over the last four to five years we have built a strong relationship with Woolworths and have chosen to no longer export,” says Ashby. “Having a partner like Woolworths has really made a difference because they believe in what we believe in – giving customers the best quality fruit we can – and that inspires us to keep doing better.”
One thing that hasn’t changed is the pleasure strawberries give people. Ashby’s top tip for savouring strawberries is, somewhat ironically, to make sure they’re not cold when you tuck in.
“We go through this whole process of chilling them to keep them as fresh and tasty as possible, but when you’re ready to eat them, take them out of the fridge beforehand and eat them at room temperature. That’s when they taste the best.”
Woolworths strawberries can be bought online here.