New Zealand kiwifruit packhouses are looking to automation to keep up with the amount of fruit being grown. An automated packing line at MPAC meant the packhouse needed 80% fewer seasonal workers. Meanwhile, Trevelyan packhouse ran a fully automated box-filling, tray-lining, and bulk-filling machine, EastPack had a $28 million fruit grader, and Humes ran a machine that packed 8000 trays of kiwifruit every hour, with a team of only 30 people.
According to Chief executive of New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Colin Bond, automation would be important because the industry harvested more hectares every year. The industry needed 24,000 workers to help with a 190 million-tray harvest last year, and would need an additional 1000 workers when the industry reached a potential harvest of 200 million trays next year, Bond said.
“With automation in post-harvest [packhouses] we're increasingly confident we can keep our seasonal workforce requirements the same for harvest [in orchards], but only if we continue to make 5% incremental gains in automation,” Bond said.
Source: stuff.co.nz