Avocado exports pioneer new CA technology

2 Jun 2000 - By Staff reporter

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Ray Smuts

A NEW chapter was written in Controlled Atmosphere technology in Cape Town last Wednesday when the white-hulled, blue funnelled Amer Annapurna set sail from the port with its perishable cargo totally protected by CA injected from a single on-deck generator. Traditionally individual containers are fitted with their own CA units
The departure of the
11 500dwt Cool Carriers fruit ship marked the beginning of a new partnership between Cool Carriers and Atlantic CA Services, aimed exclusively at avocado exports for the first year.
Dan E Lauritzen, Atlantic CA's managing director based in Cape Town for the period, told FTW he would be in Rotterdam when the Amer Annapurna arrived on June 7 to show the recipients exactly what sort of quality they can expect from us in future.
He said it would be Atlantic's mission to assist Cool Carriers in getting its products to Europe in the best possible way.
Also in Cape Town was Atlantic CA system's inventor William A Gast who explained that avocados, though highly profitable to grow, were also among the most perishable of all fruits, even more so than bananas.
Pointing to a hold half filled with avocados, Gast told me: That batch has as much value as the combined citrus and apple cargo in the remaining three holds.
According to Trevor Law, general manager for Cool Carriers Southern Africa, the line will undertake approximately 15 'avo' sailings of 600 pallets (about 600 tons) a week, all utilising Atlantic CA.
The 300-pallet avocado cargo aboard Amer Annapurna came from several major growers in the Tzaneen region and was transported to Cape Town by refrigerated trucks. The avocados and remainder of the cargo comprised 3 300 pallets.
Atlantic CA amounts to what is known as an 'active' system, controlling the atmosphere by automatically injecting a mix of nitrogen, oxygen and CO2 into the dedicated cargo space.
The constant flow of gases into this space ensures that the atmosphere is always 'fresh', thus lowering the level of damaging volatiles such as ethylene produced by the fruit.
Gast explained that the atmosphere inside the holds is constantly monitored by the vessel's crew while at sea and by Atlantic CA's specialists ashore in order to determine the amount of CO2 produced by the fruit which is a good indication of the maturity level and remaining shelf life.
Atlantic CA is flexible in that it applies to both ship's holds and containers. Each have their advantages. Where the holds usually carry high-volume fruit such as avocados and mangoes, containers make much better use of low volume fruit such as papaya, lychees and berries.
l Cool Carriers' Law told FTW at the time of writing that atmosphere readings transmitted by Amer Annapurna 28 hours into her voyage were exceptionally impressive.