INDUSTRY NEWS
On-farm hulling and shelling
“ The quality was outstanding . We can run the machinery at our pace ... so we can tailor it to our needs and take a bit more care .
- WA orchard manager Stephen
Beckwith
WA orchard manager Stephen Beckwith shared his experiences with establishing an on-farm hulling and shelling facility with attendees at the recent Australian Almond Conference .
A WESTERN Australian almond Only a few tonnes were run through grower estimates it has more than the new equipment during the halved its freight costs this year commissioning phase . by installing hulling and shelling “ Although it was pretty hectic at the equipment on-farm . time it did come together really well ,” In past years the orchard transported Mr Beckwith said . field weight across the Nullarbor “ Our supplier taught us some really via train before it was taken to the good skills to get the machine going Riverland for further processing and well .” marketing by Almondco .
The line was designed to process 1.8 “ Freight prices certainly aren ’ t going tonnes of kernel weight an hour but down , they ’ re going up , so we pretty Mr Beckwith said it exceeded that , much had to make a decision ,” doing 2 to 2.2 tonnes . orchard manager Stephen Beckwith “ The quality was outstanding ,” he said . said . The processing equipment was “ We can run the machinery at our sourced from Spain and while there pace , which with all respect to the were some delays with shipping , Mr processors they ’ ve got a lot to get Beckwith said it came together quite through , so we can tailor it to our well . needs and take a bit more care .” “ For a start-up project , teething Grain bags were used to store the problems and challenges are really almonds for a few months while the normal but we had a really smooth hulling and shelling equipment was install process and even from the being installed but Mr Beckwith said testing phase to production was really in future years the company intends quite quick ,” he said . to process the crop as soon as it ’ s
28 In A Nutshell - Summer 2024 Vol 25 Issue 4 harvested and then send it straight to Almondco . “ In terms of insect risk and degradation that risk is certainly reduced and we ’ re looking forward to that next year ,” he said . Shake and catch machinery is used on the orchard at harvest time , but Mr Beckwith said the decision was made to beef up precleaning equipment to enable ground harvesting to occur when needed . “ We did some ground harvesting this season and that certainly put the processing equipment through its paces because the floor hadn ’ t been swept before , but it actually worked really well ,” he said . “ We intend to continue on the shake and catch journey , it ’ s really worked well for us and we normally do some ground harvesting at the end , if seasonal conditions mean there ’ s been wind drop because we need to be able to capture that crop .”