SPONSORED EDITORIAL

As Christmas approaches, supermarkets are preparing for their busiest trading period and keeping their shelves fully stocked is crucial to ensure customers can all enjoy tasty treats this festive season.

The UK’s largest apple and pear grower, Medway based AC Goatham & Son, is using the latest technology to make sure supermarkets up and down the UK have delicious British apples and pears for customers to eat this Christmas and also every week of the year.

Technology plays a crucial role in making this happen and each day there are thousands of boxes of orders to sort, pack and deliver to supermarket depots.

Keeping the UK’s supermarket’s full of fresh food is absolutely vital and whilst many businesses slow down or stop over the Christmas period, the Goatham’s team will be busy making sure their apples and pears reach their final destinations.

Goatham’s is unique within the industry as it owns every aspect of its supply chain, ensuring it can consistently deliver quality apples and pears throughout the year, helping to reduce food miles and reliance on imported fruit.

Speed and efficiency throughout all of its business operations means that Goatham’s fruit is hand-picked in the orchards and quickly put into dynamic controlled atmosphere cold storage units, which are sited at some of its 25 farms in Medway and across Kent.

Chilling the fruit as fast as possible is very important to ensure it stores well until it is needed.

Because the apple bins which store fruit in these giant fridges will have a range of different sized fruits within them, it is necessary to sort them to make it easier to pack them.

Ever wondered why the apples and pears you buy are all the same size?

Using the latest in robotics and technology, the fruit is taken out of cold storage and put onto the fully automated packing line. A robotic platform lifts the bin and the apples are gently tipped into water, to begin their journey in a water flume.

The apples are washed and visually checked by the packhouse team before floating in water to the next stage of the pre-grading machine.

A giant camera on the machine takes around 20 images of each individual fruit per second, before telling one of hundreds of computer operated cradles which of the 36 water channels the fruit needs to be carefully dropped into.

This means the fruit is sorted by colour, size and weight and also checked for imperfections – both inside and outside in less than the blink of a human eye.

Fruit is then carefully floated back into the fruit bins and taken to the next stage of the process which is packing and distribution.

That might be a loose bag of apples or pears, a box or a bag of small apples for children.

There are a range of different options for the different varieties and sizes of apples and pears, including ripe and ready pears.

The fruit is then taken to the chilled dispatch area before being loaded into Goatham’s own fleet of chilled vehicles and driven to depots across the UK.

By handling the fruit as little as possible, Goatham’s apples and pears arrive in tip top condition, packed full of flavour and goodness and ready to be put out for shoppers to grab and go.

So, whilst Christmas is a time of feasting, remember the British farmers and growers who have helped deliver food to you and your family this festive period and don’t forget to grab a bag of Goatham’s delicious, healthy and convenient apples or pears to enjoy.