The orchard tour ended with fruit leaving the orchard in those big red bins. Now those bins are arriving at one of our many receiving stations located throughout the Okanagan Valley.

It is the grower’s responsibility to get the fruit to one of our receiving stations. Growers can choose to deliver the fruit themselves, hire a trucker to deliver the fruit, or hire cooperative trucks to get the fruit. Have a look at the various types of trucks we use.

Flat Deck

Straddle

Super-B-Train

The traditional flatdeck is used for small volume.

The straddle carrier allows the truck and forklifts to operate non-stop! Forklift drivers can set-up loads in advance and the straddle truck driver doesn’t need to wait to be loaded. The straddle is very effective moving bins and pallets short distances.

The super-b-train trailers are used to haul fruit between Summerland and Kelowna production plants. One truck can haul 95,000 pounds of fruit. That’s a lot of chewing!

Most of our receiving stations are only a few kilometres from the growing areas. However, we do have a few growers located a one hour drive south and south west of our southern receiving station in Penticton. In addition, we also have growers located in the beautiful Creston valley. Where is Creston? In the Kootenays, a six-hour drive east from Kelowna! That’s where the Kokanee Glacier beer originates! Our growers report the Sasquatch prefers the sunny frozen glaciers and consequently has not been spotted pilfering fruit from local orchards!

What is a receiving station? It’s a temporary station with cold storage facilities, a very large scale for weighing bins, a couple forklifts, and a temporary office with a low-cost computer. Here the fruit is inspected for quality and stored in the cold room. The grower receives paperwork indicating the variety of fruit that was received. A copy of the paperwork is also attached to the grower's bins. From this point on the cooperative is responsible for moving the fruit to one of our many packaging lines, storing the fruit in controlled atmosphere, or selling the fruit through our factory outlets. Here are pictures of our receiving stations. Nothing fancy, just the basics!

A Receiving Station

Receiving Fruit

Unloading Fruit Destined For CA

Receiving Fruit

 

Into The Cold Rooms

We are an amalgamation of cooperatives. Therefore we have cold storage facilities in seven locations throughout the Okanagan Valley! Five of these locations also have controlled atmosphere facilities.

What is the difference between cold storage rooms and controlled atmosphere rooms? Controlled atmosphere rooms are special rooms that can maintain atmosphere, have doors that can be sealed, and have specialized automated equipment to monitor and adjust atmosphere as well as temperature.

CA Door

Regular Storage Door

Every week, based on weather forecasts and harvest progress, we try to predict how much fruit will be received during the next week. Therefore, the receiver already knows whether the fruit should be put in controlled atmosphere, sent to a production line, or sold in the factory outlets. Let’s assume the fruit is sent to controlled atmosphere storage rooms.

 

Controlled Atmosphere Storage

What is controlled atmosphere (CA)? It is a process, developed in the 1960’s and greatly improved in the 1970’s, where most of the oxygen in a sealed room is replaced with nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Removing the oxygen slows the ripening process. You can think of it as fruit hibernating!

Apples we store in a bin, directly from the orchard, in CA. Whereas pears we first pack into shipping boxes and the pallets of boxes are stored in CA.

Apple CA

Pear CA

Each apple variety has different requirements for storing in CA. For example, McIntosh are stored at 3 degrees Celsius whereas Spartans are stored at 0 degrees Celsius. Golden Delicious are stored at 1.2% oxygen and 1.5% carbon dioxide whereas Royal Gala are stored at 1.2% oxygen and 1.0% carbon dioxide. Depending on harvest temperatures, estimated CA holding time, and market destination, Red Delicious can be stored at 0.0 to 1.1 degrees Celsius and 0.7% oxygen to 1.2% oxygen. The researchers at Agriculture Canada in Summerland are very helpful in providing us with information regarding the storage requirements for the many apple varieties. New apple varieties require new storage procedures.

In order to maximize the future shelf life of apples, CA rooms are sealed within two or three days of receiving fruit from growers. Generally the process works like this: At harvest the decision is made to store a particular variety of fruit in a certain CA room. Fruit is received and, if statistical sampling indicates the required quality characteristics are met, is immediately stored in the CA room. The refrigeration equipment immediately starts to cool the fruit to the desired temperature. As more fruit is received it is also stored in the CA room. Within two or three days the room is filled and the door is sealed. When the fruit in the entire room has reached the desired temperature, the oxygen is reduced by increasing the amount of nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the room. Within a couple days the room attains the desired atmosphere. The automated equipment will maintain this atmosphere until the fruit is required for the fresh market.

The fruit is now hibernating. The ripening process is slowed considerably. Once oxygen is restored the fruit will continue to ripen as usual.

Danger!!! Beware!!! If you walk into one of these rooms while the oxygen level is low, without warning you will quickly become unconscious!

The controlled atmosphere rooms are sealed but not pressurized. Having a low oxygen atmosphere does not require pressure. Remember the small door inside the large CA room door? Each CA room has a few hundred pounds of fruit stored just inside the door. This fruit represents a sample from the various grower fruit stored in the room. The small door allows access to the fruit samples. Starting in January, our horticultural experts test the samples every month to measure how well the fruit is keeping in the rooms.

How do they survive entering the rooms? That’s easy; they don’t enter the rooms! Instead, the dedicated Cold Storage Specialists wear oxygen equipment and do the dangerous work!

Entering the rooms always requires at least two people. One person enters the room and gets the samples, while the other person waits outside the room, ready to rescue the first person if they don’t appear within a few seconds!

Entering CA Room

Removing Samples

What do they do with the samples? They inspect the samples carefully documenting the various quality characteristics. Then they eat them! Inspecting crisp, fresh apples will make anyone hungry! Luckily, two people can only eat a few apples at one time! The remaining apples are cut in half! That’s how you look for internal quality characteristics! This sampling process is repeated once a month for every room, until the fruit is required for the fresh market.

Inspecting CA Apples

Once the fruit is required for the fresh market, the decision is made to open the CA room. This process requires notifying the local federal government agriculture inspection office, the cold storage specialists, and the receivers. Once the room is opened, it will take two days before there is sufficient oxygen in the room to allow forklifts to start unloading the room!

Each plant has a receiver responsible for ensuring the fruit arrives at the packaging plant before the scheduled production run. The receiver is responsible for scheduling the trucks and finding a location at the plant to temporarily store the fruit. Each grower’s bins of fruit must be moved and stored together in order to provide a continuous run over the production line. The quantities for each grower run will generally vary from ten to sixty bins.

Here is a picture of fruit being transported from one of the CA storage sites to a production plant.

Apples To The Packaging Line