22 | EBOP: EastPack REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Karen Phelps Zespri Sungold plantings bring boost Last year EastPack packed 47m trays of kiwifruit with volumes expected to rise to 60m trays within five years. Industrial Controls are proud to support EastPack Limited. Providing industrial electrical engineering & automation services INDUSTRIAL CONTROLS CHRISTCHURCH LTD LOCATION / CARLYLE STREET TELEPHONE 03 379 1182 EMAIL icch@icch.co.nz WEBSITE www.icch.co.nz POSTAL PO BOX 6520 UPPER RICCARTON Specialists in all aspects of Pipework & Fabrication Fabrication | Installation of Process & Services Piping Equipment Erection & Mounting | Plant & Equipment Relocation | Craneage, Rigging & Scaffolding 26 Fifteenth Avenue, Tauranga +64 21 084 71162 jacob@mpfengineering.com W www.mpfengineering.com Significant growth in Zespri Sungold plantings has had a flow on effect for EastPack with increased volume coming into the business. “Zespri has issued significantly more licenses to grow the Sungold variety, 3500ha over five years, and our growers have a good share of that so we’re in the middle of a steep trajectory of growth,” says EastPack CEO Hamish Simson. Last year EastPack packed 47m trays of kiwifruit with volumes expected to rise to 60m trays within five years. This has seen EastPack’s business change rapidly to meet demand, says Hamish, including investment in larger and more automated grader technology. “In essence we are trying to reduce the reliance on people to run our graders due to labour constraints, which has been particularly difficult with the closed border over recent years. Secondly this investment allows us to extract more performance out of our graders, the largest of which is14 lanes wide and capable of spitting out more than two boxes per second. By managing to be more efficient and effective in how we run our operation since 2017 our productivity in this area has increased by around 30%.” EastPack is presently constructing another high-speed grader at its Quarry Road site, which will be commissioned in February 2023. Another key area of investment for EastPack has been in its coolstores and it now boasts four completely automated robotic coolstores. “They are five storeys high and can operate 24 hours per day with no people needed to load,” explains Hamish. “They store a bit over 2000 pallets per coolstore, so 2.2m trays total capacity. We will continue to invest in these and have just completed semi automated coolstores in our Edgecumbe and Marshall Road sites giving over 1m trays of additional coolstore capacity for the 2023 season. Alongside this EastPack has grown its controlled atmosphere footprint for the gold variety, resulting in significant changes and improvements to infrastructure. “It’s not new technology exactly and we have used this for over 20 years for the green variety. But gold has a different metabolism and no one was really doing gold at scale in the world before so we were one of the first working hard on getting gold to be really successful in a controlled atmosphere. So we have rebuilt our entire controlled atmosphere infrastructure to handle gold extremely well. We have 5m trays of controlled atmosphere gold variety capacity and are now putting in more infrastructure, which will push us close to 6m trays, so it’s been really good for our growers.” Hamish says that alongside investment in technology, equipment and infrastructure EastPack has also invested in people and systems, building a team capable of processing the growing amounts of volume. “At the end of the day this industry is all about people. So building up a team that allows us to support our business and the changes is important. For example we have larger more complex graders now that need a different technology skillset.” In addition EastPack has started two separate businesses to allow it to offer a more comprehensive service. Prospa is EastPack’s orchard management division, which offers high performance orchard management and supporting services to optimise growth and maximise the returns from customers’ kiwifruit crops. “We now manage a lot more of our own growing - 1300ha whereas that figure was more like 600ha five years ago. A third of what we pack is from orchards we manage,” says Hamish. EastPack also owns Pinpoint Hort Lab Services, which collects and tests samples from orchards across the Bay of Plenty to help growers make informed decisions to get the most out of their crops. Hamish says that Prospa now tests around 25% of the industry’s volume. “EastPack is endowed with some of the most sophisticated packing and coolstore equipment, and range of services, in the industry and that this brings real advantages for EastPack growers so they can get as much class 1 fruit as possible from every bin harvested. We will continue to invest so we are ready to manage growth for our clients. “We have good plans in place and will be building significantly more infrastructure over coming years.” “In essence we are trying to reduce the reliance on people to run our graders due to labour constraints.”
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