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The Nelson Photo News

 

14

Looking at Industry

Processing the Harvest

From all over the province the fruit trucks are rumbling in a never-ending stream towards Nelson. Their destinations are either the cool stores of the New Zealand Apple and Pear Marketing Board at Port Nelson, or the board's fruit processing plant at Stoke. Those apples and pears which do not reach the required high standard of the board and the Department of Agriculture, end up at Stoke, to be processed into 12 varieties of apple or pear canned fruit. At this time of the year the big factory is almost overwhelmed by the gigantic stacks of crates and boxes containing the fruit awaiting processing. When we visited the factory, about 500,000 cases of fruit surrounded the main buildings. The factory was originally designed to handle 250,000 cases of apples a year, but the production area of the factory has undergone a complete reorganisation in recent years with the result that last year it handled nearly 730,000 cases of fruit - 30,000 cases of which were pears. A third of the production from the plant is sold overseas, especially in England, and the remainder is consumed in New Zealand. Staffing has also increased to the stage that today two shifts, employing 72 women on each, work a five-day week. Come with us now as we tour the plant. The pics on this page are self-explanatory the extent of the stockpile of fruit.

The staff was processing pear halves at the rate of about one case every 2 mins. Using four machines, therefore, the factory is processing about 9600 cases of pears a week.