APPLES FOR JUICE

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30471, 19 June 1964, Page 7

APPLES FOR JUICE

Big Increase This Year

(H.Z. Press Association): NELSON, June 18. The Apple and Pear Board’s fruit juice factory at Stoke will process 560,000 cases of apples this year. This was an increase of almost 50 per cent on the previous best figure of 375,000 cases, the manager of the board’s processing division, Mr J. B. Cubey said in a telephone interview from Wellington. This year’s figure has been swelled by a consignment of 40,000 cases of hail-damaged apples from Auckland, only the second time that fruit from outside the Nelson district has been brought to the factory. It is possible some frostdamaged fruit from Hastings will also be bought. Mr Cubey said there would be more solid pack apple • made at the factory—most of it for export—than there had been in any previous year. The juice product also would be greater than it was last year.

It was hoped the juice processing would be finished by the end of July but the apple pack production would continue with a double shift possibly to the end of August, and with a single shift perhaps to the end of September. Production started this year on February 5 and a double shift was introduced on June 3. About 40 women work in each shift.