CITRUS FRUITS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 April 1938, Page 3

CITRUS FRUITS

PROVISION OF PRE-COOLING PLANTS. DURBAN’S AMBITIOUS PLANS. Important plans ate taking shape for the provision at Durban of one of the biggest and most efficient subterranean pre-cooling plants for export citrus from the Union. Although the plans have not definitely been accepted as yet, it is proposed to build into a new £2,000,000 wharf a vast refrigeration plant which will enable fruit to be handled with the minimum of delay and exposure. Durban recently stood in danger of losing its citrus export trade from me Transvaal. It has long been realised that the existing pre-cooling plant at Durban for citrus export has been inadequate to accommodate the rapidly increasing trade. The plans are that the interior of the new wharf should be given over almost entirely to the proposed precooling plant. It will be constructed in such a manner that the refrigerated trucks loaded with citrus may be shunted direct into the storage rooms, where they will be unloaded without exposure.

The citrus ships with their pre-cool-ed chambers will be brought alongside the wharf in the usual manner and the pre-cooled fruit loaded into the cool chambers direct from the subterranean plant.