Hawkes Bay Hort Goes Hi-Tech
The Kiwi horticulture sector is going hi-tech, using 21st-century solutions for challenges like labour shortages and a changing climate. We speak to Hawke’s Bay apple growers embracing change, and learn what Farmlands is doing to support the fast-evolving sector.
If you were to bring early 20th century Hawke’s Bay apple grower Walter Taylor forward 100 years in a time machine to 2024, the family orchard of today would be almost unrecognisable. Now run by Walter’s grandson Kelvin Taylor, Taylor Corporation has about 450ha of apple orchards, and everything from the varieties being grown to the spacing of the trees is vastly different to when the Taylor family began growing in the area more than a century ago.
The biggest difference, however, is not out in the orchard but inside the brand-new packhouse, which has been completely rebuilt since being devastated by Cyclone Gabrielle last year. “One season we redid our packhouse with robotics; the forklifts in the shed don't have drivers or anything like that, and we do stacking with robots, boxing the apples, and putting the apples on the trays,” Kelvin says.
“We had a really modern packhouse, as modern as anyone in the world, before the cyclone, so what we've done since is just basically put the same stuff back in again.” Steve Anderson, the Operations Manager for the orchard, says water levels during the cyclone varied from a metre deep in some areas to swallowing trees five metres high in others.
“It went through Kelvin's house, Cameron's house [Kelvin’s son], all of our packhouse, all of our coolstores. And we also lost orchards in the Fernhill area where the stopbanks broke.” The coolstores were filled up with water, and there were bins of newly harvested fruit floating down the road, Steve says.
“Kelvin made the decision to replace the packhouse, which most people said would never happen in one year, but they've had an amazing group of contractors that did the first installation who all came back - and a few extras - and got it all up and running. The plan is to get the coolstores fully done in the next two years because we couldn't do the whole lot in one season.”
Despite the disaster that struck last year, Kelvin says conditions in the area are generally very favourable for apple growing. The family shifted their orchard a few kilometres north to its current location in the 1960s, and he says one of the biggest benefits of the move is lower risk of frost. “It's a lot warmer on the northern side of Hastings, and that's why we basically got changed from the Hastings area to the Napier area.”
However, Steve says climate conditions have become more unpredictable the past few years. “The changing weather patterns have been something that's of consideration because in the last five years we're getting more rainfall than we used to get, so there's been different pressures on black spot and that sort of thing, for pest control, for disease control.”