25 Jan 2012: Days to Harvest – 6
Our state of the art packline has just arrived from Italy and not a day too soon. While the rest of Australia will be celebrating Australia Day tomorrow, Michael and the boys will be installing the new packline for the beans.
While the product fresh borlotti beans is not new, what is new is how we are going to pack and present them. Normally, people buy beans in the pod, then get them home and shell them. We wanted to make this easier for today’s busy shoppers, so between Big Red and this new packline, the shelling, washing and sorting will be done for you.
Big Red will shell the beans in the field (leaving the shells behind as mulch), the beans will go into a bin, into the temp controlled packhouse for a wash and a cool down, then onto the packline (parts of it you can see in this photo), where the product will be machine graded and machine sorted before being machine packed into 300g punnets. These will be flushed with nitrogen to keep them fresh, then the freshly shelled beans will be sealed into punnets. The goal – not touched by a human hand from paddock until you open the pack in your kitchen. This ensures freshness…and safety.
Jina