Tatura Fresh Tomato Glasshouse Site Inspection

Welcome to IN-GV’s first site inspection for the year!

Come and join Jon Murphy of Tatura Fresh while he hosts a site inspection of the tomato glasshouses at Tatura. With the new development, Tatura Fresh site will now take up 9.5 Hectares under glass roof.

A brief rundown of the process that you will be able to see Murphy Fresh and Tatura Fresh tomatoes are grown in state-of the art glasshouses. The climate is controlled by a specially tailored computer program called PRIVA. This system lets us control and monitor heat, irrigation, nutrients and all the technical aspects of the glasshouse including vents and shade curtains. Growing in glasshouses also minimises exposure to pests and diseases and allows us to adhere to the strictest hygiene procedures.

Seedlings are received at between 4-5 weeks old and are planted into a fibre growing medium called rockwool. Drippers are inserted in to the rockwool and the plants are fed in a climate-controlled environment gently nurturing them to picking which is 8-10 weeks after planting.
Teams of crop workers tend to the plants daily, nipping the yellow flowers to create trusses of 5 tomatoes, lowering the plants to allow for 30 cm growth per week and twisting a string around the plants to ensure they have optimum growing space and are stabilised. Crop workers are also responsible for manually pollinating plants using a pollinating wand ensuring all plants produce optimum yield. Glasshouse grown tomato plants produce 70-75 kilograms of fruit per plant over ten months, ten times the amount of field grown tomatoes.

Picking each shed twice a week, our picking and packing season lasts for 10 months. Pickers use specially designed trolleys running down 120 metre tracked rows and pick tomato trusses straight into the box. Full trolleys are transported across to our automated packing facility and feed into a de-stack machine where they are carefully unloaded onto a conveyor belt. Highly skilled packer’s sort through fruit ensuring the correct weight, product specification and only highest quality fruit make it through to the supermarkets, greengrocers and restaurants. Once fruit is packed it is loaded onto a pallets ready for dispatch. Fruit ready for distribution is stored in a cool room maintained at 12 degrees Celsius. Fruit is dispatched daily to distribution centres across Australia.

The result of all this meticulous planning and hard work is flavoursome tomatoes bursting with antioxidants and nutrients, firm, super juicy ready for use all year round.

RSVP: 5pm, Friday 11th February 2022 RSVP now

COST: Free for members.

We look forward to seeing you there.

PPE requirements: high visibility clothing & safety boots.

Regards

IN-GV Committee