Apples with Apples: How MAF Roda Technology is Helping Hawkes Bay Weather-Proof Its Output and Meet Rising Global Demand
Much of the concern raised by New Zealand's primary industries in recent years, particularly among fruit growers, has centred on the risk that catastrophic weather events pose to crops and harvests. Cyclone Gabrielle, which struck in early 2023, became the most expensive weather event in New Zealand's history, claiming 11 lives and hundreds of homes and cutting a swathe through agricultural and horticultural land across Hawkes Bay and Tairāwhiti.
Omahuri Orchard
The Fulford family has been orcharding for 112 years and started Omahuri Orchard in the early 1970s. Operating in the Hastings / Havelock North area, Omahuri spans more than 55 hectares across four sites, grows around 36 varieties of fruit, and packs out over 2,740 tonnes annually. Around 2,200 tonnes of that is apples for export, with roughly 540 tonnes of stone fruit, cherries, plums, nectarines and peaches, supplied to the local market.
Director Peter Fulford says the outlook for the region's apple growers is positive, with stable demand and encouraging export conditions contributing to industry confidence. Omahuri was fortunate to come through Cyclone Gabrielle with relatively minimal impact: the orchard had a 12-hour power outage and lost around 100 trees but recovered quickly. Over the past five years, mindful of both weather-related and biosecurity risks, Omahuri has invested in post-harvest and packhouse technology from MAF Roda.
“We installed a MAF Roda grader, which has been fully operational since the start of the 2019 season,” Mr Fulford says. “Before this, our packhouse relied heavily on manual labour, with people responsible for grading, sorting, and packing the fruit. While effective, this approach naturally allowed for human error and inconsistency. We now utilise internal defect sorting technology, which allows us to ‘look inside’ the fruit, assess the internal quality, and detect issues that aren't visible externally. We also use Globalscan for external defects such as wind rub, bruising, sunburn, and other cosmetic defects. We can intercept and remove defective fruit early in the process, helping to protect quality and maintain consistency.
“As an automation-ready orchard with machinery such as hydro ladders instead of traditional ladders, our current technology and equipment enable us to consistently produce high-quality fruit while efficiently handling multiple sizes, grades, and packing speeds simultaneously. This level of precision and flexibility allows us to maximise throughput without compromising on quality, ultimately supporting stronger returns and improved operational efficiency across the business. We now have better visibility of our production and packhouse performance than in the past, which gives us stronger insights across the season. This helps us make more informed decisions around grading, quality, and throughput, ensuring we can consistently meet customer requirements.”
Kelston Orchards
Hawkes Bay's Kelston Orchards has operated as a family-owned business for more than 40 years, specialising in the growing, packing, and selling of fresh apples for local and international markets. Owner Tony Harington says that in 2020, the orchard's packing operation was working 60 to 70 hours a week in response to rising global demand, but the business's equipment was ageing, and it was time to upgrade with top equipment and technology to enable much faster packing and ensure the infrastructure kept pace with the growth of the business.
“It was a major upgrade to rebuild our packhouse facility and put in a turnkey, state-of-the-art MAF Roda system designed to maximise value and pack multiple grades out of a bin,” Mr Harington says. “We built a big new cool store at the same time.” More than half of the apples processed by Kelston Orchards are its own fruit, and the 2,500-square-metre packhouse facility now includes a multi-lane feeding and optical grading system able to handle up to 60 bins per hour.
“We installed a six-lane pre-sort system feeding onto a four-lane commit-to-pack line, complete with all the conveyors and equipment for handling the boxes,” he says. “With our old and new sizers, we have the versatility to do what we want.
“The whole upgrade had a major impact on our productivity, and we are now packing almost half as much again in two thirds of the time. With 60 people in the packhouse we can put out as many as 10,000 cartons a day. My parents had a packhouse out of which we packed 15,000 to 20,000 cartons a year, and we just finished a season where we packed 635,000.” When it isn't packing apples for export, the Kelston packhouse is used to support local summer fruit growers.
Mr Harington says weather is the primary challenge for the business, which luckily lost only a few trees, but half its crop for the year, in Cyclone Gabrielle. In his view, innovation is the gamechanger, with robotics and automation transforming horticultural industries around the world.
The India opportunity
Another potential industry transformation may be coming in the form of New Zealand's new free trade agreement with India, Mr Fulford says. “There is strong growth potential in the apple export market, particularly as new trade opportunities open up,” he says. “We are positive about the FTA with India, which is a significant growth market for New Zealand apples and has the potential to become an important part of our export strategy. Importantly, the MAF Roda grader and internal defect technology give us a strong foundation for scalability, so we have the quality control and operational flexibility to increase throughput in response to greater demand.”
MAF Roda's systems are designed for that kind of scalability. MAF NZ is part of MAF Roda Agrobotic, the global leader in automating post-harvest processing for fruit and vegetable packhouses, with more than 18 locations worldwide. We design, manufacture and install the equipment growers need to grade, sort and pack their fruit and vegetables, from the smallest cherries to the largest watermelons, and take care of the entire packing line so growers can operate as smoothly and efficiently as possible.
MAF NZ’s work with these two orchards has been featured in media including:
https://www.thepress.co.nz/rural/361043424/growers-turn-advanced-automation
