34 | iLine Construction: Eastpack Development REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Demand drives coolstore venture Virginia Wright The rapid expansion of the kiwifruit industry is driving the need for more coolstores and packhouses. Proud to be partnered with iLine Construction on the Eastpack Development project. Based in Mount Maunganui with offices in Rotorua and Hamilton iLine Construction has just celebrated 10 years of industrial and commercial building. Their new subsidiary company iLine Coolstore Services (ICS) came into being last year. Tony Watson joined the original directors Paul Hammond and Elton Verran in a venture which concentrates on building packhouses and coolstores for kiwifruit, avocado or any other horticultural product needing controlled conditions. As rapidly as the kiwifruit industry expands so does its need for cool stores, and controlled atmosphere (CA) rooms to process the fruit from picking, through packing, to the point of departure from the orchard where its grown. “Kiwifruit is probably a close second behind Fonterra, not necessarily in value, but as a shining exporter,” says Tony. “The knock-on effect of that is needing more facilities, more storage, and more packhouses. It’s a growing industry and no-one, even in the industry, knows when it’s going to end.” ICS is currently most of the way through two extensions for Eastpack, a Bay of Plenty kiwifruit grower who supply around 25% of the kiwifruit market. On their Katikati site they’re building three cool stores and six CA stores, while on their Edgecombe site another six cool stores and 12 CA stores. That’s enough storage to handle 1,300,000 thousand trays of freshly picked kiwifruit. “With such a large volume coming in such a short time, the CA rooms allow them to store the fruit when it comes off the vine for a period of time before they can be packed and go into cool storage. Ultimately It helps Eastpack better manage their shipping volumes,” explains Tony. Building kiwifruit industry infrastructure in the current construction climate is not without its challenges, simply keeping the construction going being the biggest one. With products and materials such as their steel framing arriving in fits and starts from an Auckland in lockdown, Tony and his team adapted their approach to meet the challenge. They had the paneling on-site so, instead of the traditional approach of building the superstructure first, as the steel arrived they constructed as many CA stores or cool stores as the steel permitted, one by one. This unconventional approach, a bit like building a house room by room, allowed them to keep the build on track. “Then we were hit with the sub-contractors having staff shortages as they contracted Covid themselves, but we got there,” says Tony. These challenges were on top of the normal cool store and CA room construction hazards presented by the weather, and wind in particular. The Edgecombe structure measures 120 metres x 40 metres, Katikati 60 metres x 35 metres. The sides of these long rectangles are made of lightweight polystyrene panels, easily caught by a gust of wind and needing near perfect conditions for safe handling. Constructing the airtight CA stores is a specialist field. The need for thermal efficiency to keep those rooms cool as economically as possible means bringing in specific engineering and design requirements. “They need thermal breaks in between each room, and the floor’s quite heavily constructed with polystyrene to provide insulation which you wouldn’t have in a normal warehouse,” explains Tony. The buildings are a model of efficiency in themselves once completed. The 120-metre x 40- metre rectangle housing six cool stores and 12 CA stores in Edgecombe is a good example. The cool stores run the length of the rectangle, around 30 metres deep, and are accessed by exterior doors along the front of the building. You access the smaller CA rooms, also running the length of the rectangle but only 10 metres deep, through the cool stores. The fruit goes into the airtight rooms where the oxygen is replaced with an inert gas which stops the fruit spoiling, then, “once they’ve been used as CA stores they open the doors, turn on the cooling units and they convert into cool storage themselves, ready for the packing to begin,” says Tony.
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