(DOGS BARK) (WHISTLES) - Always a favourite on every rural road ` (DOGS BARK) He used his savings to buy cherry trees as a teenager. - I went to the old man, and I said, 'Look, we should get into cherries, and he said, 'If you're serious I want all your paper-run money.' - Now, he's running a multimillion-dollar export business and saving cherries from going to waste. - By 2030, our goal is to rescue 4000 tons of fresh cherries. (COUNTRY MUSIC FADES) Captions by Faith Hamblyn. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2024. (RELAXED MUSIC) - Currently we're at peak season. We've got the maximum amount of pickers out there, which is 19-hour days harvesting, and we were up into the sales office last night till 1 o'clock, doing loadouts for customers on China time. - Reece van der Velden is driving from his home in Wanaka to the cherry orchard he runs in Cromwell. The season lasts just six weeks, and it's an intense time. - So off the tree and to the customer as fresh as possible, air-freight cherries ` 45% to Taiwan, it's our biggest market; and then we move into the smaller markets, like USA and Malaysia and Indonesia. - There are tons of cherries ripening. Reece and his team of supervisors need to plan the day's harvest. - Great effort, guys, yesterday, and we're gonna have another big one today, but the main thing is just learning how far through the crop we are this season, 30% of the orchard, so we're getting there ` still a long way to go. You've probably noticed the pickers have been picking well, because the fruit, every single fruit they pick is almost export grade, it's going straight into the buckets. We're working still behind the dam here. - Christian Alberton is the orchard manager. - Picking on the Block 3. Is that correct? - Yeah. - And then the guys are gonna move into this Block 4 in here. - Nice work, guys. Thanks a lot. Keep it up. - The business has grown from 7 hectares of trees planted by Reece and his father, Henry, in 1999, to now 100 hectares. The company is called Cherry Corp. - Peak volume is usually for 10 days only, between the 10th of January and the 20th of January. We expect to have 400 ton off the trees in those 10 days. We need 200 pickers at a minimum, for the whole season. We have 500 employees ` that's pack house, supervisors, QC, support staff, main management. It's a big effort. This will be picked today. It'll take 15 minutes to get it out of the orchard, to the pack house, and we should have it to export markets within 60 hours ` most likely Taiwan. Depending on the size, they might be in Indonesia for the gift packaging, USA for the smaller fruit, straight to the supermarkets and, yeah, retail stores. How's the picking today? - It's good, good. It's a nice tree. - Let's have a look. Wow. OK. amazing. Yeah. It's pretty much every single cherry's perfect for export there. Great job. We're moving towards Chinese New Year, so we should hopefully get this fruit to market two weeks prior, and that's optimal time for the gift selling. - This year, Chinese New Year is on February 10th. It's a time when the cherry has added cultural significance. - The cherry's quite special. It's a circular red fruit, circular meaning the year goes full circle, and it's a healthy gift, so instead of giving someone a gift of chocolates, they'll opt for cherries. So, these are all 32 mills. They're probably the top... top 5% of any orchard in New Zealand, or if not the world. Some countries can't produce a size that large and so consistently, like we can. So, you can see the 32 mill, so that's 3.2cm. Really, really sweet. The larger the size, the more valued. It's a respectful gift for a VIP customer, to get a large cherry like this. China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore ` those markets love the Chinese New Year respectful gift of cherries. - About a quarter of their crop is sold locally. - We supply Countdown, or Woolworths New Zealand. We give them a lot of volume ` that's the market that is probably our main focus for local; direct to retail. We've had close to 10,000 applicants this season. And still get them door-knocking, trying to get work. We do pay well as an industry, but we do ask a lot of the pickers. It's a big job for them. We're asking them to single out every piece of fruit and become the quality inspectors, effectively, at the first point of call. Thanks to the tourism sector being strong, we get pickers that are on working holiday visas, that wanna be here. They might only work for a week, earn a few thousand dollars, and then go on their holiday, and then we have to, obviously, replace them, but, you know, they enjoy their time while they're here. - I'm from Chile, and I've been picking since December. - I'm from Czech Republic. I've been picking for... two weeks now. It's my first cherry picking, and, yeah, I like it so far. It's not an easy job, but it's rewarding, and we have a really nice gang of people here, so it's perfect, yeah. - Kelvin, to Supervisors. - Copy. - Yeah, you can all call smoko now. - ALL: Smoko! - BOTH: Smoko! - Smoko! - BOTH: Smoko! (INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS) - We were the first to put these nets up, about 20, 25 years ago. And at the time, we were the largest fully netted orchard for probably 15 years, until this became common practice, and now the whole industry uses nets. Obviously, birds love cherries ` the main reason is to keep them out. And it's a lighter touch, so instead of bird shooting or bird scaring, we're actually keeping them out of the orchard; it's also hail protection, and it's good for wind protection as well. It doesn't affect sun, so you still get that Central Otago hot summer days; the full, you know, energy gets into the cherries, which gives it that rich flavour. - Back to work! Back to work! - Back to work! - Back to work! - Reece van der Velden's fascination with cherries began early, before he was out of his teens. - When I was a little guy, I think I was about 14 years old, I was working at the neighbouring orchards. And I just liked the look of the industry, so I went to the old man, and I said, 'Look, we should look at getting into cherries,' and he said, 'OK, if you're serious, I want all your paper-run money. - And from the outset, his family did things differently, planting their trees further apart. - This new block has our trees at 5m-by-3m spacing, so that's 3m apart. And it was a game-changer, in terms of aiming for fruit size and yield off each tree. And we were actually told that we're crazy back in the day for doing that, because it was all about yield, and now it's all about fruit size and quality. - And a state-of-the-art packhouse ensures the best cherries get to market at speed. (WHIRRING) (TRACTOR ENGINE REVS) (GENTLE MUSIC) Once the fruit at Cherry Corp's Cromwell orchard is off the tree, the focus is on delivering the best cherries to market as quickly as possible. They're driven to the nearby start-of-the-art packhouse. (GENTLE MUSIC CONTINUES) The cherries are cooled and cleaned with water. (MUSIC CONTINUES) Then the fruit enters the packhouse for the first of many inspections. - This is the first place they check the quality from the field, and also the size in another areas of the fruit. We scan and weigh every single bucket, so we identify the exact input weight, where the fruit came from and it also helps the picker's performance, so we know how many buckets per hour our pickers are picking, the average weight per bucket for the picker, and that way, it goes back to the orchard to help the picker improve, if they're underweight, or if they're not performing effectively. We tip the buckets into a 10-degree water bath. We don't wanna shock the fruit; we wanna gradually bring it down in temperature, as it's going through the whole process of getting packed, and that actually brings it down to the optimal 12 degrees, to run through the system. The good cherries sink, and the bad cherries will float, because they've got an internal issue with a dried-out pit, and that'll have an air pocket inside, which makes it float. (WHIRRING) After the fruit comes up the conveyor belt, it goes through the pre-size rollers. We can't market a fruit that's smaller than 24 mill, so these pre-size rollers, they're spinning at 2000 rpm ` anything smaller than 24 will fall down, and on the undersize belt, and that is the only true waste that comes out of this packhouse is undersized fruit ` it can't be marketed, and it can't be sold. - This computer is a key piece of equipment. It takes multiple photographs of each and every cherry as they pass through it. - It can optically sort and image 78 photos per cherry. There's actually 39 in infrared and 39 in colour per cherry. It's taking a full rotation of that cherry, checking for defects, and it's checking how it meets our export standards. In an hour, we'll process 400,000 cherries. It's a lot of infrastructure for a short period of time ` six weeks of the year, and we're done. This entire setup, packhouse, the optical sorting equipment, the CapEx investment's about $15 million. The rest of the time, it just collects dust. So if you are committed to the industry, you would have your own orchard, you would have your own packhouse, and you would control the whole fit of your integrated structure. Then it's arriving on these watering belts. This will actually be in here for five minutes. That water is as close to 0 degrees as possible. Temperature control is critical. We must ensure that we get that fruit from the orchard, through this process as quickly as possible, because for one hour that it's outside of the cool chain, you end up with a one-day-shorter shorter shelf life. This is an auto-filling machine that's packing punnets, precisely and accurately as 600 per hour for Woolworths New Zealand. And it's guaranteeing that we don't give too much giveaway. It protects our yield, effectively. The tech's amazing, but it's not perfect, and our grade standards ask for perfection. We still need human sorters to individually inspect every cherry, and we can do this because our fruit per minute is controlled per lane. It's a very labour-intensive process, even for that extra 5%, but it's worth it in the end, because it's gonna be worthy for gifting. Every single cherry's been sized directly by the optical sorter, and now we've just got the last defect sort, to make sure that every cherry's perfect. - The best cherries are packed in gift boxes for markets in China and Taiwan, and can sell for up to $65 a kilogram. - It's a showpiece. It's pretty unbelievable, the humble little cherry that I remember getting when I was 12, back at home, getting allocated one cherry at a time and that was all we got, versus what you see now is these giant, crunchy cherries that are perfect for the export market. (WHIRRING) There's a huge number of diverse people that apply with us, and what we find typically is Europeans love the orchard, being outdoors in the sun, and here in the packhouse, typically we get people from Asia, and that's their preferred place of work. I think they like process-driven and the more intellectual side of things, where they're actually individually inspecting cherries and reporting on things ` I think that's their preferred work. - The cherries are regularly tested for their sweetness. - The minimum Brix for an export-grade cherry is 16, and that just came in at 19.6. This season, we're averaging around 20. Every batch or every pack run, we need to inspect 600 fruit for any potential insects. USA are really sensitive about light brown apple moth, so we need to be 100% sure we do not have any light brown apple moth in the fruit. We're working to 13 markets in multiple time zones. We've got China time is probably the main one ` five hours behind us, so they're closing up shop when it's midnight for us, so the sales team are still working till, most times, midnight if not 1 o'clock in the morning. We get updates, post-packhouse, of what the pack-out is, and loadouts happen straight away. As a primary industry, we're fortunate to be so close to our neighbouring countries, like China and Taiwan. They take 75% of our volume in cherries, and speed to market's important, cos it captures that quality. - And they have a new project to save good-quality cherries from going to waste. (RELAXED MUSIC) - How's the season been so far? - Oh, really lucky with the weather. It's been a flawless season, in terms of dry ` hot, dry. You can see. - Reece van der Velden of Cherry Corp has teamed up with Donald Shepherd of Citizen, a company founded to reduce food waste. - What do you think of these cherries? - Oh my days. So these are our wonkies that we're gonna rescue? - So there's just small imperfections. Most people can't tell these are actually waste cherries, that we to rescue. - They are absolutely beautiful and big this year. - Together, they've started a new business venture. - That little tiny imperfection on the nose, you can barely tell that's an imperfection, but that doesn't meet export grade, so it ends up here. - So, what I'm noticing is, that cherry's beautiful and cold as well, so it's going through your whole standard process? - The same process as an export cherry would get, this cherry has received. - Before we started this work together, these cherries would go into compost? - It wouldn't compost ` it'd break down naturally in the landfill, and the only other option would be digging a hole and burying it. - Yeah. - And that causes potassium leaching, and cherries are really rich in potassium, so you don't wanna put that imbalance into the land. Currently, we rescue all of our own cherries, and that's between 100 and 200 tons every season, so we've got a lot of work to do, but we're hoping this is the start. - We are all focussed on taking... perfectly edible food, and then turning it into a new, high-quality food and beverage. (POP!) Oh, it's looking good. - The waste cherries are processed into a concentrate, which shows high Brix ` a measure of sugar levels. - What did it read for the fresh cherries? - 21. - 21? So that means it takes about just under 600 actual cherries to go into 1 litre of concentrate. - That's such a good result. - The concentrate is then shipped north, to a drinks factory in Auckland. - We get the concentrate, we blend it with a few ingredients. It's put in a tank overnight, it's cooled, it's carbonated, and then we start the canning process. It's crazy to think that these cherries had been going to waste, and they're just a little bit wonky and don't look so good, but every one of these cans that you're seeing going through the line for cola is using 29 of those delicious things, and they're not going to waste any more. - Our goal is to rescue the entire industry, so by 2030, we've calculated, we to need to rescue 4000 tons of fresh cherries. (JAUNTY MUSIC) This building pretty much collects dust off-season. It's a bit of a shame, so, obviously, into the future, we've got the long-term plan to utilise this packhouse and, potentially, process all the waste-grade cherries off-season here ourselves. Canning lines, processing lines, we could possibly keep the team on from the season for another few months after the fact, and we run that through into drinks. Quite good out there. - Yeah, the quality's good this year, I think. - Reece is always looking to improve his crop. He's called on the help of Lincoln University's Associate Professor of Horticulture, Clive Kaiser. - The key thing I've learned with cherries is learn to understand the cherry tree and how it grows, and manipulate the tree to produce uprights, because the uprights produce the most and best fruit, and the firmest, largest fruit, with the highest sugar content. It's all about fruit size coming from numbers of leaves, so you need roughly nine to 10 leaves per fruit. - Yeah. - And so with the massive crop you've got on these, the fruit size is gonna be very different than if you look at this one over here, which is vertical, and you've got way more` - Bigger cherries as well. - Yeah. The biggest mistake people make in cherries is they prune into one-year-old wood, and that stimulates three branches that are invigorated, and they just grow wild. And so that's the key thing with cherries is don't prune those uprights in the first year. - Yeah. We make sure we are open to any technical advice that we can take advantage of. We collect everything, we're not closed off, we don't think we know the most out of everyone ` we just take onboard everything, and then choose the best strategy, going forward. - He's adopted new methods of pruning for efficiency and safety. - This is our latest development block, with our new planting. We've taken out the central leader. The traditional way of growing, that we've got in our other blocks is central leader, and it's very difficult to prune, it's very intensive. This way, we're simplifying the process. So this would be the height of one of the biggest branches, and the picker can actually bring it down over their shoulder and walk away from the tree as they pick cherries, so it simplifies the entire process ` no ladders, health and safety is less of a big deal, there's less risk in the orchard; but we can fruit picked quicker and at less cost. (PEACEFUL MUSIC) It's dynamic, it's never boring, it changes every season. You think it's quite a simple model, right? You've got a product that everyone wants ` all you've gotta do is take it off the tree, put it in a box. It's not as quite simple as that. You've got risks involved with rain, and there's a lot to manage to get a good crop out of a good season. The point of difference that New Zealand has in the cherry industry is we're speed to market. We're close to the Southeast Asian markets, so we can afford to let the trees ripen naturally, get that rich flavour out of the cherry, and we airfreight it to markets within 16 hours, and that's pretty much every market that we target for Chinese New Year. Whereas you've got other countries, like Chile, that actually produce huge volumes, but they have to pick early. So their fruit isn't same as the rich flavour from New Zealand, and they have to sea freight the majority of their volume, and it can take up to 40 days on the water for them. 26 years ago, it was small beginnings. It was a family operation. It wasn't corporate, and we just packed out of the garage, and that was our little packhouse, and getting a full vanload of cherries away was a big day for us. It's satisfying ` we've come a long way. We think of ourselves as leading the industry now, and we wanna share that knowledge with the industry, to build up the New Zealand brand for New Zealand cherries. (ENGINE REVS) - Next time ` - She's a beautiful big station ` big paddocks, dogs, it's horse country. - ...the East Coast, where they're still mustering their community to the annual sale. - They all know what it was like, and they love coming up for the day. - Take it on as they go. All done ` they'll go! - That's next time on Hyundai Country Calendar.