The last thing a grower wants is to see his fruit damaged as it travels through the supply chain, so Favco uses CHEP crates
January 7, 2013
The last thing the grower wants is to see his fruit damaged as it travels through the supply chain so Favco uses CHEP crates
Favco citrus grower and market agent Chris Deveney says the crates look after the product better.
“Crates travel better, get better airflow through the product which maintains the cool chain better and therefore the product quality is better,” Deveney says.
“Also there’s no sag. If cardboard gets wet for any reason you get compression in the fruit. As cartons are put on trucks they tend to compress together. You don’t get that with crates.”
Favco is numbered among the growers that are going back to using CHEP crates for oranges after a brief sojourn into cardboard cartons.
As soon as it was known that oranges would again be accepted in crates, Favco switched back.
“We never stopped using them for mandarins,” Deveney says.
Deveney says mandarins are less robust than oranges so require a tightly controlled cool chain to maintain quality.
However even the robust navel copped a beating in cardboard compared to crates, with damage rates increasing by 50 percent on large fruit.
“We were one of the first farms using crates when they were introduced in 2000, particularly for mandarins,” Deveney says.
“The crates improved our overall performance, with interstate arrivals turning up and we’ve been a fan of them ever since.”
Favco has farms in Mundubbera and Mareeba in North Queensland and also sources citrus from no less than 150 growers across Australia including citrus from the Riverina (NSW), Riverland (SA) and the Mildura region (Vic).
In addition to crates, Favco also uses CHEP bins for picking and CHEP pallets when transporting loads.