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| CSIRO | SOLVE | Issue 13 | Jun 08 | |
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ARTICLE
With shipping containers increasingly being used to export kiwifruit, New Zealand's leading exporter is learning exactly what happens inside these 12-metre boxes so its product arrives in top conditionMore than 90 million trays of kiwifruit make their way from New Zealand to about 60 countries each year. These small, oval, hairy-skinned fruits usually travel the globe on ‘reefers' – massive refrigerated ships – where empty hulls are packed with up to 5000 pallets of kiwifruit.
However, with demand for New Zealand kiwifruit rising and space on reefers increasingly hard to come by, the company charged with exporting them, Zespri International, has had to rely more on container ships, a move which has brought about some logistical challenges. Zespri global supply chain technical manager Dr David Tanner says that five years ago most of the company's kiwifruit was exported on reefers, but this has dropped to 75 per cent as more product is exported in containers. “It has meant we have had to assess how we pack the fruit to ensure that the packaging system suits the container and our product arrives in pristine condition,” Dr Tanner says. To better understand the subtleties involved in container shipping, Zespri turned to Food Science Australia – a joint venture between the Victorian Government and CSIRO – and its Container Test Facility (CTF). “The CTF has been important as the company moves to more container shipping,” Dr Tanner says. “It allowed us to test packaging designs and systems and how certain packaging would perform.” The CTF is a 20-metre insulated facility capable of testing containers or refrigerated vehicles. It can assess the influence of transport conditions such as temperature (from –10°C to 50°C), humidity and solar radiation on products such as kiwifruit and other perishables. Food Science Australia Processing Innovation theme leader Jay Sellahewa says that although containers have refrigeration, fluctuations in outside conditions can influence product quality. “Until a company sends a shipment overseas or interstate, they don't really know what the fluctuations are going to be like and if they will affect product quality,” Mr Sellahewa says “So, one of the purposes of this facility is to allow shipping companies and exporters to know how well containers – and the product packed inside them – can withstand journeys.” Using weather data and other information, researchers simulate a container's voyage. “We put the products we want to test into the facility and change the ambient temperature to simulate a particular voyage. We can also change the air flow, the humidity and the solar radiation, and make recommendations on whether the container is suitable, whether the product is optimally positioned, and whether the packaging works.” These features make the CTF unique, he says, and are why companies such as New Zealand 's Zespri use the facility. Incidentally, the work on kiwifruit was undertaken by David Tanner, a former Food Science Australia researcher, who has since moved to Zespri and is involved in the implementation of the work. “We are moving to a large-scale packaging trial this year and will hopefully fully implement it next year,” he says. The real benefit in using the facility, Dr Tanner says, has not been in finding out how a container works, but how the whole system interacts with outside influences. “Our fruit can spend up to six weeks in a container. So if the packaging system is not right for the container, then it's not the container that's broken, it's the packaging system that's broken. That is what we are addressing.” An added challenge for Zespri and its supply chain is getting the temperature right, so that the fruit ripens in time for delivery. The company uses temperature and gas to regulate the rate of softening of fruit, but with two varieties – the newer, more tropical gold fruit and the traditional green variety – this can be difficult. “We have to handle the gold variety at warmer temperatures than the green variety, which immediately adds complexity to our supply chain,” Dr Tanner says. “But even more complex is that when we harvest them early in our harvest window, the gold kiwis are green in the centre, so we also use temperature to change their internal colour. “Using containers, we step down temperatures: we start with our cargo at a warmer temperature and once the internal colour has changed, we switch the temperatures down.” Although Zespri is working on its packaging design changes, it is not the end of the process. Dr Tanner says he envisages contracting Food Science Australia 's CTF in the next couple of years to “test the next tranche of innovations”. ENERGY EFFICIENCYAlthough the CTF's abilities may seem best suited to testing how perishables perform, it does have other uses – particularly in assessing energy requirements. One energy-saving, non-food application could be to test air-conditioning units to see if they comply with the Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS), or to assess the energy star ratings on electrical appliances. Because the facility can regulate temperature and humidity – thus creating ‘standard conditions' for testing – manufacturers could use it to demonstrate compliance with energy efficiency regulatory requirements. The work would be undertaken with CSIRO's Energy Transformed Flagship. Project leader Stephen White says that the size and thermal capacity of the CTF will enable the range of energy efficiency testing and research applications to be extended well beyond that currently available in Australia . The CTF is being upgraded and will be re-launched in July.APPLICATION The Container Test Facility can be used to gauge the effects that temperature, humidity and solar radiation have on products ranging from perishables to electronic goods BENEFIT Understanding the effects of these conditions on goods can help manufacturers and service providers ensure that products reach end markets in an optimum state
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