As a follow up to the 'how to Kiwis grow' we have now been seeing how the fruits are picked (we were only allowed to pick the ones up that the real pickers had dropped!) and packed for the 52 countries they are exported to. We visited Roger and Janet Le Blanc Smith's orchard and then Roger took us to the Eastpack packing plant. It is one of 10 huge processing plants in Te Puke (pronounced tea pu kay) which is the Kiwi capital of the world!
To learn much more here is a link to Zespri
The only rival for kiwi fruits is Chile and since NZ has developed the 'Gold' kiwi and are developing a red and mini ones they have really no competition!
Eastpack don't export much to USA or UK - Tesco are too mean!!
The plant is huge with 3 big sorting lines, some robots some hand sorted, plus the cold stores and climate controlled longer term storage areas (and lots of fork lift trucks being driven very fast!), where fruit is kept to ripen at the right time to keep the market supplied all year although each orchard only harvests for about 2 days, as the fruit reaches the optimum sugar levels and size!
They only have 7 weeks from pick to market, 4 of which are on a ship!
Love the hats!
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