PROJECT
INCORPORATING COLD CHAIN
Inside the chiller plant room during the site visit . From left : Steven Palvi Jr , Carlo van Wyk , Baring Richardson , and Barend Koorts .
To protect quality , they try to only touch a mushroom once — when being harvested . Pickers are highly specialised and trained people , making sure that mushrooms are picked carefully and at great speed . Punnets are placed into trays and taken to the pack house immediately for final quality grading and packing .
Although the electricity bill was lower at the old site , there were the added costs of boiler fuel tray sterilisation .
7 . PACKING AND DELIVERY Mushrooms are delivered to the pack houses and then await final quality and weight checking . Punnets are wrapped , labelled , given a sell-by date , placed into lugs , and stored in a large refrigerator , awaiting delivery .
As mushrooms have a very short shelf life , they are stored for the minimum amount of time . This means that Medallion ’ s processes are designed to get mushrooms to end-users as soon as possible .
On order from customers , mushrooms are placed in refrigerated vehicles and delivered to the retailer ’ s central distribution area or direct to the store .
8 . END OF CROP AND COMPOST DISPOSAL A mushroom compost will deliver three weeks of mushrooms . Thereafter , most of the food has been used from the compost . Mushroom growing houses are then steamed out to ensure any mushroom diseases are killed and that a clean waste product is available to be disposed of .
Spent mushroom compost is then sold by our farms under contract to nurseries ,
Packaged and cooled mushrooms , ready for distribution
16 www . coldlinkafrica . co . za COLD LINK AFRICA • May 2018