Many growers will be aware of and experienced significant delays in the maturity testing over the last couple of days. These issues occurred when there were a series of equipment failures at the Eurofins lab and these failures led to software problems, essentially the software couldn’t cope with missing data fields. Along with the burden of huge sampling demand, the lab process essentially broke down. This is in spite of very good people working at Eurofins, working long hours in what can only be described as a very testing situation.
Thankfully the testing undertaken by the VLS Lab hasn’t had these issues. The lab itself has had an extensive revamp last year, the equipment is in good order and subject to regular maintenance and renewal. Testing for the samples undertaken by VLS have flowed through the system and out to growers in the normal course of business. There has however been an issue with sample receipt at VLS with many samples having to go to Katikati and then back to Te Puke for testing; seemingly “living a life on the road” and arriving very late. The team has done a fantastic job in getting the job done.
Blair Hamill of Zespri has stepped into the breach. He has met on numerous occasions with Eurofins and put in place the corrective actions. He has been communicating regularly with Seeka and I am confident that the changes that are being made will correct the problems, and the backlog cleared as soon as possible – probably over the next day or so. Zespri and Eurofins will need a bit of breathing space while they sort this at a frustrating time when many growers will have picking crews sitting around waiting for the green light. The requirement of “life on the road” for VLS fruit is being addressed in this process. Once this is done – then Blair will address any anomalies that have arisen in the process should fruit not be harvested as a result of these issues by the first rate cut off next Tuesday midnight. And it’s a vexed issue that Blair is ready and willing to consider.
On reflection, we have created a rod for our own back in developing such complicated harvest maturity protocols, rules for inheritance and have created a mini-testing industry. Possibly the creators should have included more operational people. In doing so, we have exposed the Industry to situations like the ones we are experiencing. We are fortunate that we have people like Blair in the Industry prepared to step into the breach in difficult situations not just the easy ones.
I suspect that the issue will be cleared in the next 48 hours and our post-harvest crews will take all safe efforts to deliver maximum throughputs for our growers.
Kind regards and safe harvesting
Michael
Seeka Key
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