CONTRIBUTORS
Postharvest reflections … cstudio - www . freepik . com
By Jan Lievens
When reminded about my regular Cold Link Africa column , I got into a bit of a spin for a minute – trust me , only a very small and fast passing minute , and then I remembered the perfect subject to discuss : “ When somebody does not want to listen to you , it does not help to shout . Somebody that wants to understand what you say , will do so even if you do not talk ...”
That is one of the more meaningful sayings that will always stay with me , and therefore I will never ever forget it . Indeed , this saying is so true , it is not even funny . Then the mind , which is an extremely strong weapon when used correctly , started analysing and ordering things . One of them I will gladly share this time , many others will still follow later …
In 1998 , we brought Nijssen Koeling to South Africa with their Filacell system only to find out shortly afterwards that Dr Johan Combrink , recognised leader and industry authority in at Infrutec at the time , wrote an article in back in 1973 , asking and advising the industry to ensure they investigated the ‘ Filacell ’ system that was , according to Dr Combrink , one of the systems that South Africa could possibly need in the future .
That article was published in 1973 in one of our local scientific magazines . So , we did what was asked – it was just without our prior knowledge , and 28 years later .
In that same article he also advised to look at the packaging for table grapes in detail to ensure we had the right designs for the table grape industry . The Filacell , together with a correct airflow carton , was brought in and installed with some of our pioneer forward thinking and progressive farmers with great success . So much so , that the industry took note , and the ‘ traditional ’ boys and girls became nervous .
In 2000 , the created pressure was so high that Hortec at the time did a full investigation and tested the Filacell , with the specially designed carton . The test was set up to compare the ‘ new ’ system against the ‘ traditional ’ system with the ‘ traditional ’ carton .
It is all about delivering quality and if you do not deliver it , somebody else will .
Hortec published a detailed report after all the tests . That report , which has got the most interesting comments and positive test results for the Filacell system and the carton , was written down but it never saw the light of day .
It almost reminded me of an episode from The Blacklist where Ray Reddington can pop in to create a solution .
It was by accident that I found the original report 20 years later in Wellington . The final comments were easy to understand : the Filacell system had , and still has merits , had better results , and needed to be investigated further . That never happened . The Filacell carton was outperforming the traditional carton by more than a mile .
The Houdini act caused Nijssen Koeling to leave the country to never come back . In fact , part of the conclusion was to investigate the carton designs as that carton proved to be simply superior compared to the traditional carton .
In 2015 , when Dr Luis Luchsinger was invited to South Africa , the carton story was again mentioned and the Filacell carton came again to the fore … I will leave Luis ’ comments at this time out of this article , but they were clear , and Luis became a friend over the years .
The fun part is that when we ‘ designed ’ the carton together with Mark McCleery from Mondipak in those days , we really thought we invented the new Saturnus rocket to go to Mars , this time only to find out that the formula we
Jan Lievens , born in Belgium , is a graduate civil engineering ( B ) and international senior consultant for engineered applied postharvest technology at UTE South Africa . With over 20 years of experience in this field , he is widely regarded as a specialist in the fruit- , vegetable- and flower industry with regards to humidity , airborne bacteria and ethylene removal , both locally and internationally . Furthermore , he also designed airflow-friendly packaging systems for the
industry with proven results .
produced was published in an UC Davis technical publication from 1976 .
This was around the same time Dr Combrink asked to look at cartons . To-date , the industry is still fighting with a proper airflow carton system . And still simply does not want to listen to proper and sound local airflow engineering designs . That design , ladies , and gentlemen , and for the nonmathematicians amongst us , the industry and / or their ‘ consultants ’ should have known for over 45 years what and how to do things . However , they still do not , to the detriment of the industry .
Whilst talking to Professor Luchsinger , he told me : “ Jan , despites all your brilliant efforts , you will never be a prophet on your own soil ”. He was right .
All images : Creative Commons | Supplied
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