PINEAPPLE CANNING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 June 1939, Page 6

PINEAPPLE CANNING

GREAT PROGRESS IN HAWAII. Pineapple canning in Hawaii affords an example of the degree in which mechanical operation has been developed in the canning industry, states a report of the Imperial Economic Committee in a survey of the trade in canned food. This may be illustrated, it is stated, from data published by one of the largest undertakings, having an output of more than a third of the total Hawaiian production, i.e., equivalent to a quarter of the world production of canned pineapple. The cannery and warehouses cover 29 acres, with warehouse space for five million cases. At the peak of the season 13,000 persons are employed. There are 44 processing lines and the cannery has trimmed and prepared 1825 pineapples in one minute and canned a car-load (i.e., 10 tons of 20001b.‘each) of fresh fruit in 21 minutes. The time consumed in canning a pineapple from the time it enters the cannery is: Sizing, trimming and placing in can, 68 seconds; trucking, pre-vacuumising, syruping and vacuum seaming, 57 seconds; pasteurisation and. cooling, 775 seconds; total 900 seconds (15 minutes). It will be noted that the time during which the trimmed (i.e., peeled and coned) fruit is in any sense exposed is about two minutes. The speed of the processing machines is stated at 150 cans a minute and that of the labelling machines at 1400 cans a minute. The record day for this cannery was July 31, 1937. Among the achievements of that day the following may be mentioned: Total number of cases canned, 156,930; total number of cans packed, 3,497,388; number of cans packed per minute, 2776. In 1904 the output of canned pineapple in Hawaii was a little over 10,000 cases. In the season 1937-38, the estimate for the controlled output is stated as 12 million cases, to w’hich is to be added a pack of 7! million cases of canned juice, making a grand total of 191 million cases.