Kaoshiung to Pukekohe 

 

Grower Profile, Edward Lee from Lee Wang Hothouse Ltd

 

History:

In 1996 at the young age of 16, Edward, his parents and sister, Penny, left Taiwan and moved to Manukau, South Auckland.  For the first three years they boarded with friends.  After this period the family decided they wanted to live in New Zealand permanently. 

Edward attended Rosehill College in South Auckland, which just happens to be my old school.  In 2000 the family purchased their first family home in Papakura. In 2002 they moved to a property on the outskirts of Papakura which had a small piece of land.  The Lee family originates from the Kaoshiung province in Taiwan which is known as a vegetable hub.  Edward’s parents come from a growing background and wanted some land to continue growing produce.

 

In 2004 Edward completed an Electrical Engineering diploma from AUT.  It was not easy finding work in his field after he left AUT, so Edward began his working life delivering groceries and working as a waiter. In 2006 he landed a job as a green acre mowing contractor.  A year later Edward was employed as an Electrical Apprentice.   This was great as Edward had found a job he had studied for.  However, after only six months Edward was made redundant, the downturn in the market at that time meant the job was unfortunately short lived. 

In 2008 Edward and his parents decided they would like to expand their vegetable growing business so they started looking at greenhouses in the local area.  After an extensive search, of at least 20 properties, they found an area of land close to Pukekohe with a 2000m2 plastic house on it.  The property was purchased and the Lee family have been growing their ever since. 

 

Edwards Parents Mr and Mrs Lee brought their family to New Zealand for a better life and have contributed immensely to their new country. Mr and Mrs Lee are still actively involved with the growing operations.

 

Expansion:

Tomatoes have been the main produce grown along with a few short crops of beans.  In 2012 the Lee family decided to expand.  Apex greenhouses built a state of the art modern 1500m2 glasshouse, which includes hanging gutters and screens.  In 2014 the Lee’s moved from growing large loose tomatoes to cherry tomatoes which they successfully grow today supplying MG marketing, with their own brand.

 

TomatoesNZ:

Edward quickly found his feet and knew he needed to keep improving his growing knowledge.  He started attending TomatoesNZ conferences.  In 2016 Edward became a full time TomatoesNZ board member. Edward thinks being part of the board is great, he is constantly learning how the industry functions and is making good connections to help his business grow.  It has taken two years to feel established as a board member, he now understands how important TomatoesNZ’s role is for maintaining and lifting industry levels.  Edward said the contribution of the board members, in particular the efforts of Helen Barnes (the TomatoesNZ business manager), is extremely important for NZ greenhouse tomato growers. 

 

Growing challenges:

Edward faces many challenges. With an eye on the minimum wage increase, taking place shortly, Edward has made the decision to grow Cucumbers in his plastic house.  The height of the plastic house means the amount of labour needed, to grow and pick cherry tomatoes, out ways the benefits. As the cherry tomatoes almost touch the ground when picking, it is not only time consuming to pick them but also back breaking work.   Edward currently hires 3 full time staff with an additional 2 seasonal workers. 

 

Edward with staff member Brenda, the team leader in the Glasshouse

 

Greenhouse Industry:

Edward thinks there is great long-term potential growth for tomatoes in NZ, but support and assistance is required from the government.  He thinks exporting is an important aspect for future growth.  Edward is keen on food safety and said that, “Being a member of GAP is great as it has made the industry lift its levels and creates good food safety practices.”  Edward uses many biological products to control fungus and insect issues, he hopes that dependency on chemicals becomes less and less. 

 

Hobbies:

Edward loves to read books and enjoys spending as much time as possible with his wife and their two young children.   He likes watching baseball, especially the Taiwanese league.  Other sporting interests include basketball and badminton.

 

Mission Statement:

Edward loves growing and is especially proud of the fact he grows and provides our community with a safe and tasty product to eat, “It’s what drives me”.

 

Edward and his family are another example of hard working immigrants who have come to NZ and contributed positively to our community.   Edwards sister Penny (right) is another important part of the Lee family growing team

 

 

I appreciate your comments.  Please feel free to comment below or on the grower2grower Facebook page:

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Article Written by Stefan Vogrincic, Consultant, Grower2Grower

Vegetables in the Cloud

Trutina, Real Time Information Making Irrigation More Precise

 

Trutina, a revolutionary cost saving monitoring system from Europe to enter the New Zealand greenhouse vegetable growers market. The product was developed by a Hungarian company, a spin-off of Szeged University Faculty of Natural Science and Information Technology. It has won the 2017 Hungarian Environmental Innovation Awards and the producers are also taking part in a research project for Delphy IC (https://delphy.nl/en/), one of Europe’s leading agricultural consultancy firm.

 

2017 Hungarian Environmental Innovation Awards in the Hungarian Parliament

 

Use of technology is still relatively uncommon across the agricultural sector, however growers should take into consideration the effectiveness of such tools.

 

Trutina is a weight monitoring system, consisting of hardware and cloud based software. It enables customers to follow plant weight (biomass) in real time, weight trends of a separate growing substrate with hanging or platform based method, showing related decision supporting info (biomass production, plant activity, plant energy balance etc.). The product can calculate the necessary amount of irrigation and drain tendency as well, which enables irrigation planning. Trutina has been tested and can be used for tomatoes, capsicums and cucumbers.

 

The device stores the measured data and continuously uploads them to the Cloud, the information then can be viewed on your computer or smartphone and the dashboard surface can be fully customised.

 

Trutina is a great tool for improving greenhouse control and strategy, making production significantly more efficient resulting in higher production yields and significant cost savings.

 

 

Insight Manager is another product developed by the same company. It is a workflow monitoring and labour registration solution, enabling employers to follow real-time activities of their employees, manage them, assign tasks, send messages. It provides statistics and tools to evaluate employees performance and the productivity of your business.

 

The product can be used by installing a system of local terminals and/or as a mobile application. The terminals can easily be integrated with the weight measurement solution.

 

 

RNR Limited, a family owned business run by husband and wife duo Reilly & Rose Tucker based in Mount Maunganui are distributers of these products. They can assist in setting up these devices, along with offering a full range of IT services and support with over 20 years of experience.

 

 

They are currently offering to set up a demo for 3 months of one Trutina system for the first grower to contact them in the Bay of Plenty area.

 

For more information, please email rtucker@rnr-ltd.co.nz.

 

 

 

 

Berries in Greenhouses

High Tech Berry Growing in Greenhouses is Becoming more Popular.

 

Recently growers in Europe, and other parts of the world, have started growing berry crops in hi- tech greenhouses.  Initially it was strawberries, but now raspberries and blackberries are quickly coming into hi tech greenhouses.  The highly publicised ‘added health benefits’ from certain berries are making them extremely popular with consumers not to mention how great they taste. 

It is evident that this sector could grow exponentially in the next five to twenty years.   What is noticeable is the different structures that berries are being grown in overseas and the ones that some growers are moving towards here.  They appear to be poles apart.  Growers in the UK and Europe are starting to grow berries in super high-tech environments, modern greenhouses, heating systems, supplementary lighting, etc.  There are no shortcuts.  In NZ, to my knowledge, the high-tech greenhouse growers produce mainly vegetable crops.  We certainly have the structures and the growers to grow berries in high-tech structures.  What I have heard and seen is NZ outdoor berry growers starting to cover crops with low tech tunnel houses and structures. Their capital investment is low and it is like they are just treading carefully in the water, not dipping their toes too deep as they are fearful of drowning. Or is it something else?

Hi Tech, Strawberry on Hanging gutters.  Check out the insect netting and diffused glass!!

I think there are three large advantages to growing berries.  Firstly, for our local market where all year around fresh product could be supplied.  The second advantage I see is berries can be frozen and stored for both local and export markets.  The ability to freeze the berries, without losing too much of the health benefit, must make it a desirable product to grow.  The third is the storage ability and the control this will give growers. Any chance of frozen fruit arriving to market before it goes off is negligible.  It will allow for controlled supply and very low percentage of waste.  For fresh berries to be exported it would have to air freighted, possible, but it would need premium pricing.

I love the idea of NZ becoming involved in this sector in a more high-tech fashion.  There is a real opportunity here for small, medium and large size scale business to succeed.  The government is looking at cherries as a growth industry which is absolutely positive but perhaps this should be on their radar as well.  Job creation, export dollars and wealth creation.  That’s all that needs to be said.

I hope and expect this sector will expand.  I will be keeping a close eye on any new projects with great interest.

The cover photo shows LED lighting being tested to see if there is an impact on the production of this Blackberry crop in Holland.

 

Young strawberry crop recently flowering and fruiting, UK

Blackberry crop. UK.

 

FYI, this cherry crop in Europe has been covered.  I have heard (speculation) one grower in NZ is covering a 3ha cherry orchid with a greenhouse which will be fixed but have its roof retract when the weather is good!

 

I appreciate your comments.  Please feel free to comment below or on the grower2grower Facebook page:

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Article Written by Stefan Vogrincic, Consultant, Grower2Grower

 

All photos supplied are via social media sites except the cover photo.

Storm Batters Auckland

It was a miracle there wasn’t more damage!

 

On the evening of Tuesday 10th April, the worst winds I can remember tore through my property.  At 10pm I was outside attempting to tie garden furniture down, which was trying to fly off! When I went to get a rope out of my truck, a rather large palm tree, outside my front door, was threatening to snap in half!!  I have been scared a few times in my life, a small number of times in glasshouses when high winds have been threatening, but this was something else, a new experience! 

Like a lot of people, we lost power. It was restored at 3pm the following day, so we were among the lucky ones.   Even though the storm was predicted, the winds were only forecast for 50-60 kilometres per hour.  I don’t know exactly what the wind speed was, all I know is that it felt like a lot more than 50-60 klm/hour, and it was bloody terrifying.   When I finally went to bed at 1am, after blowing out the candles, I was thinking, thank goodness that happened at night and not during the day.  Being inside a glasshouse when glass is breaking and falling is not a nice experience. 

Over the next couple of days, I contacted local growers to ask about the damage. It came of no surprise to me when I heard quite a few growers had damage. It was quite mixed as some had major damage and some had very little, if any!  Two greenhouses within one kilometre of my property were affected.  One had half its ridge venting ripped off the plastic house.  The worst was the glasshouse which lost up to one hundred panes of glass with several gutters collapsing.  The crop had just been removed, so the glasshouse had no weight pulling down on the structure.  In one way this probably did not help but at least no plants were lost. 

Most growers were without power except those with emergency generators.  It was a timely reminder that things can go wrong very quickly.  Some 7 days later while I write this, some Auckland residents still do not have power!!   I think the properties that had generators, would have been very happy, as it was not only the biggest storm of the year, but the coldest evening by far with temperatures plummeting. 

We keep being told this type of weather could become more prevalent. Potential damage to greenhouses could become more common.  It is a timely reminder to make sure your insurances are up to date.  Talk to your Insurer and make sure that your policy covers you correctly.  You might even want to enquire about policies that cover income protection just in case you lose your crop to such an event. 

Talking to counties power the following day I was informed there were at least 50 lines reported down in the region! Power could have been out for a lot longer.  If it was in the summer then a lot of crops could easily have been lost due to a lack of irrigation and venting except those with emergency generators to hand.  It is a cost to have a generator but probably something not enough growers have to protect their investments?

Red Poles and wooden beams are used to support the glasshouse until repairs can be made

 

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