Fruit marketing and distribution company Worldwide Fruit officially opened its “new” packhouse and office facility in Spalding last Friday.
The company has been operating out of the Apple Way site since January, and local MP John Hayes carried out the official ribbon-cutting duties, labelling the facility as “fantastic for Spalding, fantastic for Worldwide Fruit and fantastic for [its employees]”.
The 52,000sqft factory consists of four large, fully racked cold stores, 10 double-tier ripening chambers, and a 22,000sqft temperature-controlled packing hall with 13 packing lines, and 4,000sqft of despatch area, packing stores, and engineering facilities.
The office block hosts staff amenities and production staff on the ground floor, with 8,500sqft of office space for sales and accounts on the first floor.
The packing facilities were tested to the max by the need to handle excess volumes of apples and pears after the Fruit First facility became unavailable to WWF growers in March, and passed with flying colours. But 80 per cent of the fruit going through the facility will be pre-ripened avocados and pears.
“The new facility enables us to meet the demands of our customers in a more appropriate facility, and the purpose-built factory has guaranteed efficient levels of production,” said WWF md Robert Balicki. “The new coldstorage and ripening rooms are low maintenance and reduce our year-round energy costs.”
