Mpac successfully completed stage five of their facility expansion in February this year, in time for the 2025 New Zealand kiwifruit season. The expansion took 11 months to complete.
"The expansion increased our static coolstore capacity by five million trays, 19 million kgs of fruit, 3.6kg per tray," said Bredon Lee, Managing Director of the Mpac Group. "Our coolstore capacity is now 21 million trays, and our processing capacity is 40 million trays."
Stage 5 is a coolstore facility, pre-cooling, static racked coolstore, container dock loading, charter canopy loading, condition checking, and repacking facility.
© Mpac
Environmental Benefits
"Our new coolstore uses Ammonia Glycol, the main benefits of this are higher thermodynamic efficiency, meaning better heat transfer. Ammonia has favourable thermodynamic properties, which means for the same cooling load, you can often use less refrigerant mass flow, smaller piping, and less energy in compressors. It also tends to be much cheaper than many halocarbon refrigerants (Freon types), so the cost of the refrigerant charge is lower."
"Ammonia has zero Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP) and very low, essentially zero Global Warming Potential (GWP). Many freon/halocarbon refrigerants, especially older ones, have significant GWP and/or ODP. Ammonia's properties make it more suited to big cold stores, freezers, food processing, and industrial refrigeration where loads are large, temperature ranges are wide, etc. For those cases, ammonia often gives better performance and lower total cost of ownership."
Better storage performance
The coolstore is specifically designed for kiwifruit; the modern fit-outs drive better storage performance and quality outcomes for growers.
"Commercially, we can pass on savings made by the scale of our operation. Mpac is very disruptive in the post-harvest market with our service pricing. We've built up strong capacity in recent years, and the infrastructure is in place to support further growth."
For more information:
Brendon Lee
Mpac
Mobile: +64 7 547 4400
Email: [email protected]