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<pre>Roger

> Is this a feasible scenario?

You raise an interesting issue but perhaps TimberCor may be able to provide
some solutions for their plantation of 250000 Barnea should all be in the
ground by next Fall. As Barnea are said to produce a commercial harvest
within three years they will have to develop something fairly quickly. The
plantations are up the back of Boort, a relatively remote part of Victoria,
with sparse population.

As the plantations are single varietal the logistics become even more
onerous. Assuming a 50kg/tree yield it would give a staggering 12500 tonnes
of olives all at once. 250 semi-trailers worth. 2500 hours of pressing in
a 5 tonne/hour press or 125 days of pressing 20 hours per day. 2500 tonnes
of oil (at 20% extraction wxw); 2750000 litres of oil.

And this to be repeated dozens of times throughout Oz and NZ. Butler (and
others) have said Oz will need 60 major processing facilities by the end of
the current decade; I think we currently have 10 either commissioned or
planned.

If Sweeney is correct, Oz will have around 7.5 million trees in the ground
by 2001. Should interesting by 2009! Using the same assumption of
50kg/tree this will provide 375000 tonnes of oil give or take a litre or
two. Australia's projected consumption of olive oil by 2006 is a mere 22500
tonnes (Sweeney). That's a lot of exporting we are going to have to do and
one can reasonably assume that our Spanish, Greek, Italian etc friends are
not going to say "Here's your market share". If anyone is interested there
is more info at http://www.victorianolivegroves.com/growing.htm

Might have to upgrade my Oliomio100 I guess.

Regards
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<pre>>
> Another possible source of brain strain (for me) is the actual logistics
> of mech harvesting. To give a hypothetical situation, a farm of 1,000
> trees with 50 kgs fruit per tree would produce 50 tonnes of product. So
> you would need 2 semitrailers plus a forklift plus a processing plant
> nearby that could handle this quantity quickly. A further complication
> would be that if you had a mixture of cv's (lets say 3) maturing at
> different times you would have a minimum of 3 harvesting dates. A
> havesting contractor has stated that you need to harvest each tree
> twice, to get the fruit that was a little green the first time. That
> could mean 6 visits, with 6 x establishment costs (float etc).You would
> be at the mercy of the system.
>
> Is this a feasible senario?
>
> Roger Farquhar Hunter Valley


Roger,

In reality you are more likely to find that there are several small bursts
of activity, so a smaller truck doing several runs would be more likely than
2 semis. Our experience is that the harvest spread over 6 weeks or so ....
due partly to availability of labour ... so there isn't the pressure to get
it all done at once.
At least, that's my theory!

Also, could you give me a ring about those Koroniki you were talking about
please. I don't have your phone number. Mine is 4998 7311.

Regards,

Mike Wilson.
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<pre>Mike,

I was referring to a harvester that runs at 2 trees per minute. This is
the figure quoted by a contractor. Theoretically if you have 1,000
trees after 1 day you will have 50 tonnes of fruit (not including the
weight of the pallets) ready to go! Probably 2 truck & dog trailer
combo's with tailgator type of fork lift would be the answer, similar to
brick trucks. Say $100 per hour each, 4 hours per round trip, $800
approx. Plus the hardstand for loading and access and plenty of turning
room for the trucks, many people dont have this.

Roger Farquhar Hunter Valley

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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<pre>>
> Mike,
>
> I was referring to a harvester that runs at 2 trees per minute. This is
> the figure quoted by a contractor.

Two trees a minute! How big an operation are you planning?

With a harvester picking 1000 trees a day, this requires a planting of at
least 1000 trees to justify, and then around 20 or so plantings to be picked
by the contractor to be worth his while bringing the machinery into the
area. Do we have 20 planting of 1000+ trees in the Hunter, and are they all
prepared to use the same contractor, and is the contractor prepared to come
back several times to pick at different levels of ripeness?

I still intend hand picking my 400 trees, and when the new plantings next
door come on line, say 5 years time, giving me about 900 to pick, I will
probably be looking at some form of power-assisted picking (pneumatic
rakes?).

Many of the plantings I have seen locally would never justify the scale of
operation. Certainly the "hobby farm" style of operation seems to be about
100 trees.

Mike Wilson.
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<pre>Dear all

Delaying harvesting retards new bud formation for the next season.

Stan Kailis
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