Harvest has started!

Autumn has arrived and with that the harvest season has started for the Southern Cross Horticulture (SCH) cropping team. We caught up with Megan Fox (Cropping Orchard Technical Advisor) and Quintin Swanepoel (Orchard Manager) to see how harvest was going for the team.

“This year has started off a bit sluggish compared to the previous years due to Dry Matter (DM) tracking behind especially for the size profile of 36’s and 39’s. This has been reflected across the industry with less submit trays so far. We have picked about 25% of the SCH cropping hectares so far with a whopping 724 bins coming off one site the 28/03/2021, the biggest and smoothest day we have seen. This wouldn’t be possible with great decisions being made in the background, thanks Alex Ashe (Cropping Operations Manager)”.

“It has been a dream having Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) workers who are incredibly motivated to do the best job they can. This year we’ve had the best quality we’ve ever seen creating a smooth harvest for all”.

Megan and Quintin acknowledge the wider SCH team, including the contracting team, Seasonal Labour Unit (SLU), People and Culture and everyone who has contributed to the team to ensure harvest operations run smoothly. “The supervisors are doing an amazing job at making sure harvest runs smoothly through constant clear communication throughout the teams”. “Loving P&C coming through with the goods (pizza on late nights)”. “Harvest machinery has been very well looked after by the contracting department to ensure all machinery run smoothly. It has been a great team effort in maintaining the machinery fleets”.

A huge thank you to all teams involved in harvest, getting fruit off the vines of our world class orchards creating happy customers and consumers all over the world.