Jury still out on fresh produce freight debate

With quality for consumers at the forefront of fruit and vegetable operations, farmers who choose to export in to Asia are hoping to provide a high quality product at the end of the line.

General manager of Montague Fresh Rowan Little and Quality Manager at Manbulloo Ltd Scott Ledger have recently participated in quality assurance tests for their exported nectarines and mangoes, with mixed results.

“We’ve been looking at gaining access to the Chinese market for 20 years and our first shipment arrived poorly,” Mr Little said.

“Sales were slow and the flavour was poor.”

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Mr Little said turning access to a new market into industry success was a slow process.

“You don’t know what condition the fruit is in and so for us to have close monitoring throughout the process was important,” Mr Little said. 

The Montague Fresh team were able to gain access to valuable temperature data with the use of probes placed both on the inside and outside of the packaging.

“We were then able to access the data in real time via our mobile phones,” he said. 

“We found that, to be successful in terms of volume, you have to go by sea – we had a greater consistency in temperature with the fruit remaining under 2 degrees celsius the entire time.”

While the temperature was consistent, Mr Little said the major concern was the amount of time the produce was in transit.

“From the moment of packing to arrival, it was more than 30 days, which is far too long for stonefruit,” he said. 

By comparison, Mr Little said even though air freight was a much faster option, the fruit was often exposed to ‘kill zone’ temperatures of between 3-8 degrees for the entirety of the journey.

Shipping 3250 cartons of Manbulloo mangoes out of Townsville in January of this year, Mr Ledger said the temperature monitoring project was an important milestone for the business and their customers.

“It showed us how little we know about what’s happening with our product in the supply chain,” Mr Ledger said.

“We found the temperature profile was different in every single shipment.

“Sometimes we get it right and sometimes we don’t but without this monitoring, we don’t know.”

Manbulloo heat-treats their mangoes to kick start the ripening process before sending them through pre-cooling prior to shipment.

“We have the facilities to pre-cool but we weren’t doing it effectively and then, at market, our partners weren’t cooling the fruit effectively.”