Trade term
Field heat, and the temperature that travels in the box
Fruit picked in the afternoon carries the orchard temperature into the box, and a box holds it far longer than the air around it. Nothing later removes heat the fruit arrived with; cooling only draws it out slowly, and every hour it stays in shortens what is left at the far end.
The figures
| What it is | The orchard temperature the fruit carries at picking |
|---|---|
| Where it persists | Inside the box and the pallet core |
| What removes it | Active cooling, not transport refrigeration alone |
What it changes on an order
You are agreeing a loading time
Fruit picked in the cool of the morning starts with less heat to lose. The picking hour is a legitimate thing to discuss.
Your lorry is refrigerated
A transport unit holds a temperature; it does not pull one down through a stacked pallet. Arriving warm and leaving warm are the same thing.
You are measuring on arrival
A probe in the outer box and one in the pallet core can disagree widely, and the core is the honest reading.
What this note does not settle
- We have not confirmed whether our fruit is cooled before loading or how quickly; that belongs to a packing arrangement which is not settled.
- This note is about the physics of the load. It is not a specification and not a promise about any lot.
The orchard temperature travels inside the box
Fruit cut in the afternoon leaves the orchard carrying the heat of the day inside it, and that heat is the starting condition for everything downstream. Warm fruit respires faster, softens sooner, loses water quicker. The rule of thumb the discipline works from is blunt: for every ten degree step, the rate of respiration roughly doubles. Picking at first light and picking after lunch produce two different products from one tree on one day.
Nobody writes that hour on a purchase order. Variety, class, size and count all appear on it; the temperature of the fruit when it went into the bin does not, although it explains more disappointing arrivals than any of them. The hours between cutting and cooling are the other half, and those depend on the distance from plot to packhouse and on whether a loaded trailer stood in the sun waiting its turn.
The number a buyer can ask for instead
Pulp temperature at loading closes the gap. It is read with a probe pushed into the flesh of several fruits drawn from different pallets, and it tells you what the vehicle is being asked to hold rather than where somebody set the thermostat. Ask for it on the loading document. Ask, while you are there, how long the fruit waited between the orchard and cooling.
A second effect is worth planning for. Warm fruit moved into a cold store or a cold vehicle sweats, and free water sitting on a rind is what green mould needs to start. Condensation at the door gets read as a transport failure when it began as a field temperature nobody removed. Our harvest handling is not confirmed here, so that question goes to the grower rather than to this page.
Talk to the grower
Tell us the variety, the sizes and the delivery week you need. You get a delivered price and what we can commit to in writing, from the person who picks the fruit.
The grower handles enquiries. Response times are still to be confirmed.