Entrepreneurs juiced to find use for freak hailstorm fruit and avoid waste
PRODUCE damaged in a freak hailstorm in a region lush with fruit has been saved from rotting away, but one Nelson business says more needs to be done to accommodate unexpected food waste.
Boxing Day 2020 finished off a brutal year for many orchards in parts of Tasman as the hailstorm struck, destroying crops, including hops, grapes, kiwifruit, apples and pears.
But some businesses looked to the old adage of turning lemons into lemonade; juicing and rebranding the storm-damaged, imperfect fruit.
Award-winning Nelson juice company, Chia Sisters has turned pears from Motueka Steiner School and Farm into pure pear juice.
The school reached out to the sisters, known for their sustainable approach to business and the environment, before pears were picked, pressed and bottled ready to be sold.
But without anywhere locked in to sell, Chia Sisters founders Chloe and Florence Van Dyke said only 5 to 10 per cent of the 3.5 acres of pears could be picked.
Florence said the usual channel of getting products into big supermarket chains could take more than six months, ‘‘which doesn’t work in this situation’’.
There was no way the pair could juice the pears from around 700 trees and bottle them without knowing a supplier had their back, she said.
‘‘In a food waste situation, you have a limited amount of time, and you need to make decisions really quickly.’’
But help may be at hand.
Fresh Choice Nelson was able to fast-track their processes and place an order the same day the fruit was picked, while Chloe said that Countdown was also onboard.
‘‘We’ll be picking as many as we can, [and] the following week all we’ll be doing is pressing and bottling pear juice’’.
One dollar from every bottle sold will go to Motueka Steiner School.
Chloe said the supermarket was working with the sisters to find a solution, which could see them heading back to Motueka to pick the remainder of the school’s pears.
According to figures from New Zealand Apples & Pears, Nelson’s crop was down by 36 per cent due to the damage from the hail, seeing thousands of tonnes of apples being damaged.
Nelson apple company, Golden Bay Fruit has found a silver lining in the unexpected weather event, branding the hail-hit apples as Stormy Fruit, selling them locally and around the globe.
Golden Bay Fruit marketing consultant Eleni Hogg said the blemished, dinted fruit didn’t meet the tight class 1 standards but the apples were still good enough to eat.
‘‘They’re our very best quality fruit, kissed by nature.’’
The imperfections include hail damage, sunburn, branch rub or a small bruise, seeing fruit fall outside of the top class standard every year but she said with more flawed fruit this year, it gave them ‘‘the impetus to do something about it’’.
She said Stormy Fruit was ‘‘going well’’ and the brand would continue to be utilised in future.
‘‘We’re selling multiple containers of it, sending big 40-foot containers off-shore every week.’’
And Hogg said she was excited to be trialling the product in Nelson’s Raeward Fresh.
Golden Bay Fruit chief executive Heath Wilkins said up until now growers were effectively throwing this kind of fruit away, sending it to be juiced or selling it for stock food for little to no return.
But the new brand would help improve the sustainability around food waste, he said, and educate consumers that ‘‘imperfect’’ fruit could still be high-quality.
Small Nelson juicing business Mad Melon increased production substantially post-storm to cater to the orchards’ damaged fruit surplus.
Mad Melon owner Jamin Brown said he was normally juicing about 20,000 litres of apple and watermelon a month, but production went up to 120,000 litres.
And he said with the factory’s zero waste policy, all of the product was consumed.
Apple pulp was given to stock in the Nelson region, ‘‘which in turn, becomes meat which goes to the works and export meat’’.
‘‘We supply about 20 tonnes of stock feed a week; that’s going to be really beneficial in the winter when the grass is a bit challenging to get hold of’’.
‘In a food waste situation, you have a limited amount of time, and you need to make decisions really quickly.’ FLORENCE VAN DYKE