hello welcome to Kate's Ag today i am here with John Ardiel apple grower and one of the family
owners of Bay Growers Storage and Packing so we are going to be touring the facility today
which is very exciting and thank you so much you're very welcome okay good luck thank you
a lot of it's all automated um something we kind of work towards is uh using different
robots and things like that to help uh um reduce some labor costs and things like that
uh so apples come in here um they're submerged in water because water is the safest way to transport
the fruit so it doesn't bruise because apples are so simple to bruising yes so the bin submerges
and the apples travel down through this fluming system uh they go through a rot detection system
which uh scans the apple and if it senses any rot it uses a jet of water to blast that apple out of
the line oh wow um they then go uh well we can move work our way up on them okay the technology
is incredible yeah so there's uh different types of parking lines um there's what's called a commit
to pack where it means that you're committed to pack the amount of apples that you bring out of
storage so if someone calls and they're looking for a certain grade of apple um if they're looking
for a 88 count size fancy grade gala then we have a commit to pack line would have to pack a whole
bunch of other sizes of apples and qualities in order to get those thousand cases of cigarette
of 88 count fancies if you know what i mean and then once they're in cases they can only go back
into cold storage so then you're kind of committed to selling them in a certain time frame because
that wouldn't last as long and cold storage once it's been packed so for us what we do and what
a lot of plants do now um this was actually the first pre-short line in north america this side
of the rocky so it was built in 2000 and we uh so pre-sort meaning that we bring all the apples in
we put them through what's called a pre-sort system which is a series of blooms that you see
over here and the apples are all sorted by size and color and grade and then they go back into the
bin through a hydro filler so that what uses water to fill the bin back up wow when they go back
into controlled atmosphere storage but they're all sorted that way when we get an order from
metro for a certain size we don't have to pack a whole bunch of other apples to get it
so we can deliver that order really quickly because we already know what size of fruit we have
that's ready to go and then but also we don't have that additional fruit packed and sitting in cold
waiting for sale yes that's very it makes us much more efficient so the apples travel under us here
they go through a rot detection system um they get dried off they go into what's called a simulator
to put the apples into single lanes then they travel down here they go into this vision system
which takes about 60 pictures of each apple and makes a 3d image and it detects any uh defect in
the apple or anything like that any barring on the skin and then they travel along here
so after the vision system every apple is weighed so you need to help determine the size of it
and then it travels down all these fluming lines and every one of these cups is electronic and
it'll drop that apple into the water in the right fluming line with other like apples oh my gosh
yeah so then they travel down to the hydro filler they get packed back into the bin they go back
into ca storage until we get an order for that size wow um and then over here we'll be back we
have uh part of the packing line so there's really different aspects here we have the pre-sort line
then we have the packing line so the apples come over here they can be going for bags um in which
case it's generally smaller food so they travel through here down to the bagging line which will
walk around to or they go through the tray line which goes through here um but because you have a
shovel by water the natural wax that they produce gets washed off of them so we reapply that wax
partly to help preserve the apple because it was washed off in the plumbing process
but also to add that shine for the consumer so that they uh like that nice shiny red apple um
but it's all just an edible natural wax and then they can either go into the tree line where you'll
see them open on the shelves in the store or into the bag line i had no idea how technical let's do
it and it's incredible how efficient you are we try to be and that's the most important thing
you try to gain efficiencies every year um whether it's on the pre-short line or on the packing line
as well as using calls um no longer discarded into a juice bin they go through what's called
a dry bin filler and then they'll be filled into bulk uh cardboard box pins that'll go
into uh different chain stores no trails things like that where the consumer and they may have
a slight defect on them but still very edible and uh so they'll go at a lower rate but much better
than a juice price apple wow that is amazing yeah and wait a process i had no idea that
um you sell your apples based on the size and they have to be yeah a large other life-size
apple larger tray size fruit is definitely worth more um if you were to if you didn't grade them
and you had a whole mixed bag and you had one big apple make the rest of it really small even though
they may not be so everything's great of course for that consistency wow that's very interesting
this year is how you do the defect sorting wow it'll take out basically everything except for
uh bruising you have to have a special machine that does the roofing so it'll take you
how many pictures does each apple get taken uh here i think it's around 20 pictures so you
can scroll here see it that's one after that's one the same app but it takes it takes pictures all
the way as it rotates underneath the camera that's incredible and takes all the little defects that
they can see but these those defects aren't really anything important so we don't worry about those
and then this here is how you do the sizing of the fruit from bagels all the way to large
tree side like 16 different water foods that potentially you could have 16 different grains
and that's apples that are smaller that go to the bag market and so that would be apples that
are two and a half inch and up apples are the size goes by the number of apples that fit in a bushel
okay so the smaller the apple the more fits into a bushel so in the grocery store when you
see loose apples they're generally 88 to 100 okay 88 or 100s and 88 means 88 apples fit in
the [ __ ] or 100 options bag size is generally 125 to 163 oh so here all the apples are moving
water's the most gentle vehicle to move out here you know when you're horsing around in
the swimming pool or something it's hard to make any impact right yeah the same with apples
so where is the machine that takes the photos of the apples
that is it and that's what we were looking at on the screen that's awesome oh what are these
apples down here uh there you will be opposite uh just uh being discarded will be something
it's got a cut in it yeah so that's been checked out and goes to the juice that one has a frost
frost mark on it and that just says you know what that has that has a leaf on it and it
couldn't tell the leaf they couldn't tell the difference from the leaf and an actual blemish
to an actual blooming and that's just because it's odd shape and that's because it's too green
so here the apples are given a final wash and brushing air dried and then they get a light
coat of just like a vegetable wax then they go through this long chamber and it's a drying
chamber and then wax is dried right it is a vegetable wax so it's totally totally good
and these are the apples that are being discarded yeah and here then they have
to be stickered so that when they go to the store when they go to the store um the cashier can just
let's see if they get a sticker out here so that's got the variety gala and the uh code numbers and
their system that then tells them what to charge that's great the technology is incredible it is
it is a lot of work cleaning those will be yes so the apples as they come down the line uh it's
hard to show without office but they get in onto those purple trees hey there how are you thank you
what is the process you are doing right now
so any imperfections right
by this point you shouldn't be too busy right so then again they're back in
deciding what combination of apples it wants for the size of package that's going in wow thanks
there was another small packer in the area uh it would either go to them or they'd be
shipped to different parts of the province and the growers just felt that they weren't
getting the best return for what they should be getting and transportation costs and all that
stuff so we want to be more vertically integrated so right from planting the trees
yeah one field
up here see it's already staged the oh wow
wow
that is wonderful
so it places in a specific way yeah specific way
the robots are so impressive and they never need a dental appointment so the case will
come out here uh it'll check the case up and automatically stack it on that pallet wow
all right isn't that cool oh my gosh it knows which places to put it i've
never seen anything like it that's incredible
wow
that is crazy thank you apple's coming from the orchard to the storage come by either
tractor and wagon or by truck okay either one and uh when they get here there will seem and
she does starch iodine tests so we know what sugar levels there are and the maturity the apples uh
these are all the different kinds of pressure um and the variety date and then the general comments
so that's the start of a room being built wow these are really good oh ambrosia very awesome
chose the orchard grower the grower number the variety the room is being stored in
the farm it came from and the block and that's all for food traceability for food safety
number of bins on that lot and then this invoice number will carry through the life of that apple
this is all uh controlled atmosphere storage
okay so as well as just being cold once the greens are full they get sealed off and the oxygen gets
removed from the room and it's just replaced with nitrogen and then because apple's emit co2
the room has to be constantly scrubbed as co2 oh wow um so it goes through a co2 scrubbing system
of their affiliates okay that's very interesting because we would
take our brain to the elevator and then it would be transported
thank you so much for watching today's video i really hope you enjoyed and learned a little
bit more about how your apple gets to your table and also to give you
a lot of comfort in food safety and security yes and that is very important absolutely
make sure to like and subscribe thank you so much for watching bye