Processing plant is the apple of their eye

WOMEN on Farms members spent a cold day fascinated by apples bobbing about in water.
The Thompson family’s Battunga Orchards and the Ajani family’s Bon View Orchards have developed a site where the apple is centre stage.
A large shed houses a purpose-built production line incorporating world best technology with great staff to provide fresh apples throughout Australia.
Apples sorted in the morning in Tynong are on the shelves of supermarkets in Sydney by 8am the next day. Supply is even quicker to Melbourne outlets.
The whole set up utilises the best systems from around the world.
German, Italian and Dutch technology is used in the washing and apple-sorting machine and robotic bin movers feature at the beginning and end of the sorting line.
Traditional wooden bins full of apples come from the cold storage rooms where they have been kept cool at 1 per cent oxygen since picking.
These bins are picked up and immersed in a vat of water, the apples float out and around to the sorting machine, having first passed an operator who picks out any badly blemished apples and leaves.
Then the magic happens.
The apples pass through a machine where each individual apple is photographed 100 times and goes into an individual numbered cradle.
This machine can identify 800,000 apples per day at 40 per second.
The apples then proceed to where there are about 50 sorting channels and they are delivered to the same specifications in each line, size and colour being the main criteria.
The apples remain bobbing about in water until 330kg of one type is amassed.
Then they are automatically shunted along the race and into a bin. This bin is delivered to a set place for collection by a forklift truck driver to be taken to a correct packing line or cold storage.
Apples are then floated out of this bin, they can be waxed with natural bees wax if required, air-dried and then packed by people into trays, or punnets.
The punnets are automatically wrapped in the label required, stacked in trays or boxes, onto a pallet and dispatched for delivery.
Apples are also bagged with tight weight specifications maintained.
Attention to providing a great product at the correct specifications has resulted in a successful company.
Women of all ages are welcome to join Women on Farms.
The key criterion is an interest in farming and farming women.
There is no need to be actively farming to participate.
For more details contact secretary Jean Irvine on 0429 488 156 or visit www.womenonfarms.org for the monthly program.
For inquiries about this article contact Lyn Link on 5629 2202.