COLD-STORAGE OF FRUIT.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15775, 16 December 1916, Page 6

COLD-STORAGE OF FRUIT.

STORES TO BE ERECTED AT PAPANUI.

Considerable importance lias ioi many years been attached to the cool storage of fruit. Owing to the lack of\ facilities, however, tho tremendous advantages of this industry have hardly been realised by Canterbury' growers. It would enable our orehardists to enter into competition with North American exporters, who ship to this Dominion many thousands of cases each year as soon as the local-grown supplies cease and prices, in consequence, begin to rise. Last year the Dominion spent, the large sum of £37-S,CH)O on imported fruit.

There is every prospect of a record yield of local-grown fruit this coming soison ; and as this .would, in the ordinary corrso of things, result in glut prices prevailing, the Agricultural Department is arranging "with 'Messrs Baker Bros. for the creetion of extensive cool stores, for which purpose a site comprising eight. acres, adjoining tho Papanui railway, station, has been secured, and the. stores will be ready i'or the reception oi : fruit in March next.

In reference to this subject, a member o!' the firm of Messrs Baker Bros, had sonic interesting remarks, to make to a "Press"' representative list evening. The store, be said, although it was being advocated by tho Agricultural Department, would be by no mean:, a Government affair, but would bo used to store the fruit of the Canterbury' growers. Under usual conditions. with glut prices prevailing, fruit would be sokl at os and -6s per case, but it had been decided, in common with Motueka. Nelson, Ha.wke's Boy.■and other fruit-growing places, to erect a local cool storajje building. which would enable the fruit to be kept" for four or (ive months, and ultimately.-per-mit. the growers to take part, in the market when fruit was realising 16s and 17s a case, as was, times out ot number, the case later in the season. ' The building, the speaker continued, would afford every facility for the entraining raid carriage of the fruit. It would, moreover, nrovide iK_»'nmoda--tion. for at least 35,000 cases, and it would be in »vcrv way the most up-to-date storehouse of its kind south of the line. Tho even water supply and .the facility ior supplying electric light would undoubtedly prove big factors in its success. Tlie growers, he concluded, would be permitted to apply for spnee for their fruit in the building, and would be charged a small rental, and they could put in and take out their fruit whenever they desired. 1 he ron tractors had already commenced work on the building.