By CASEY NEILL
HUNDREDS of bright green apples bob along water-filled lanes in a Tynong as they start their journey towards fruit bowls around the country.
“Apples are our core business,” Nine Mile Fresh director James Ryan said.
The company moved into the purpose-built packing facility in December 2013.
“We’d originally bought the five acres where the existing factory is over there. We retrofitted them into controlled atmosphere rooms.
“When we decided to build a pack-house we bought the land here.”
The 40-acre purchase and subsequent build was a breeze with help from Cardinia Shire Council.
“They were very helpful with getting the plans in, quickly approving and discussing what had to be done if it was to get through to make sure there were no major hold-ups,” James said.
“We’ve been here two years packing and the shed was built a year before that.
“This is a combination of two families, so two base orchards, which is Bon View Orchards based down in Officer and Battunga Orchards, based in the Yarra Valley.
“The pack-house is a combined effort between those two orchards to build a super pack-house, basically.
“We grow a lot of our own fruit and we also have growers around the country – Shepparton, Tassie, south-east South Australia,” he said.
“We look after their apples and store them and market and pack all their apples and go through the year like that.”
“We call it 9 Mile Fresh and that’s how we market all the apples.
“It’s just economies of scale.
“It’s reducing labour costs, it’s making the whole packing process more efficient, to reduce the costs of packing apples.
“Consolidation of packing facilities seems to be the way forward for the industry to survive.”
Mr Ryan said almost $30 million went into setting up the warehouse.
“We have CA storage over here, so state-of-the-art CA which is controlled atmosphere,” he said.
“That’s how you store apples, by controlling the atmosphere in the rooms.
“We normally handle 30,000 tonne of apples in a year.
“They come from the CA rooms or the growers around the country who send them and transport them down.
“The whole shed revolves around the European method of packing apples.
“We pre-size the apples first through sophisticated computer vision, which sorts the apple out without the need for labour.
“We’ve got the latest in robotics and automation, which helps.
“When the apples get taken over to be packed, they’re packing apples that are all the same characteristics, size.”
Nine Mile Fresh has 15 full-time employees and packing staff as required.
“That can be another 50 people,” Mr Ryan said.
“We’re growing all the time.
“It’s continuing to grow into other lines of fruit as well – avocados, cherries, kiwi fruits – we’re starting to pre-package those sorts of fruit and making every effort to utilise the facility.”
“We want to continue to grow with our customers.“
