Attie van Zyl, MD of Two-a-Day, says that with this new Flow Wrap technology, the company will be able to continue supplying UK supermarket Tesco with fruit that's pre-packed in South Africa.
"Fruit friendly Flow Wrap is the latest trend for fruit and vegetable packing for the discerning UK consumer. Flow Wrap allows us to pack fruit in such a way that the consumer can easily examine each piece of fruit without damaging it," he says.
Tru-Cape Fruit Marketing is South Africa's largest apple and pear marketing company and responsible for marketing Two-a-Day's fruit as well as fruit from Ceres Fruit Growers. MD Roelf Pienaar says that their marketers' jobs get easier when packhouses embrace technology in the way that Two-a-Day and Ceres Fruit Growers have. "An excellent product is always easier to sell", he says, "and it is wonderful to know that our shareholders make that a top priority."
Two-a-Day has also significantly increased their plastic bins which are more fruit friendly than their timber counterparts.
"Our two new recent packing lines and controlled atmosphere storage facilities have increased our efficiencies by 25% and we now have controlled atmosphere storage for 20,000 more bins than we had two years ago.
"Based on organic growth from our shareholders, we had to gear up to cope with the increased volume," he explains.
"Hand-held digital devices have significantly reduced paperwork and are now used in the orchard, packhouse and quality control divisions.
"New packhouse technology allows for sorting by weight, diameter, colour and defect. Previous machines only sorted by weight. This gives us greater sorting efficiency and accuracy in packing as a result of the sensitive weight sorting. The new technology can even sort by internal conditions: brix (sugar content), water core and internal browning," he says explaining that the system takes 70 high-definition photos of each piece of fruit. It also turns the fruit so that a 3D model of each piece of fruit is available for analysis. The software is built with artificial intelligence that learns to mimic human sensitivity when it comes to differentiating between blemishes from wind or bruising, for example.
"Advances in dynamic controlled atmosphere (DCA) storage means we now have the technology to very accurately measure the levels of ethanol, fruit respiration and chlorophyll fluorescence.
These indicators of the ripening process allow us to reduce the oxygen level to near point five per cent compared to normal controlled atmosphere conditions of one point five per cent. What this means is that we can maintain fruit with a combination of our DCA and CA technology in its optimum state for longer periods of time, stretching the window in which we deliver fruit to our customers. The biggest advantage of DCA technology is that it doesn't require post-harvest chemicals such as DPA which is no longer permitted in European markets," Van Zyl says.
Apart from investment in built infrastructure, Two-a-Day has also invested in cutting-edge picking platforms. "The aim of this investment is to evaluate new ways of picking, pruning and thinning to increase orchard efficiencies," Van Zyl notes.
Pienaar says that the fact that Two-a-Day always scores so highly in ethical audits means they can continue to supply global and local customers that always raise the high bar. "Two-a-Day is Global Gap, SIZA, Nature's Choice and BRC compliant among others," he says.
