On arrival
The fruit is sound and the boxes are wet
The citrus standard has a line about wet fruit and no line at all about a wet carton. Produce has to reach you free of abnormal external moisture, and where it is wrapped the paper has to be dry. So the first thing to establish is whether the water stopped at the board or reached the fruit, because only one of those is a question the standard answers.
The figures
| Required of the fruit | Free of abnormal external moisture |
|---|---|
| Required of wrapping, where fruit is wrapped | Thin, dry, new and odourless paper |
| Required of the package | Packed so as to protect the produce properly, with inside materials clean and of a quality that avoids external or internal damage, and free of all foreign matter |
| Said about a damp carton | Nothing |
| Whether our fruit is wrapped, and in what | Not confirmed by the grower |
What it changes on an order
You restack incoming pallets in your own store
A carton holds a stack up through its walls and its corners, and board that has taken up water is doing that work wet. Whether the board is plain or treated against moisture decides what you can safely put on top of it, and the packhouse is the only party who knows which it sent.
You relabel before the fruit moves on
Adhesive and damp fibre argue with each other, so a relabelling run over wet cartons produces loose labels rather than corrected ones. Let the surface dry before anyone touches it with a printer.
Your specification asks for dry packaging
That line asks for something the standard never defined, so each end will read it differently and both will be sincere. Name what has to be dry, the moment it gets judged, and who does the judging.
Your unloading bay is warm and the load came out cold
Water that forms once the doors open was not there while the driver was driving. That puts it outside anything a carriage reservation was built to describe, and inside the conversation about how your own dock is run.
What this note does not settle
- The moisture requirement in the standard attaches to the fruit. This note does not turn a damp package into a quality defect, and it takes no position on whether the load is acceptable to you.
- Looking at water rarely tells you where it came from. Trailer temperature records and the conditions in your own bay answer that far better than the carton does.
- We have no confirmed wrapping, no board specification and no post-harvest treatment to declare, so we cannot describe how our own packaging behaves once it is wet.
One line for the fruit, none for the box
The quality section of the citrus standard is a list of things that have to be true of oranges, and abnormal external moisture is on it. Nowhere does that section say anything about the state of the carton the oranges travelled in. The presentation section reaches the subject only sideways, by asking that wrapping paper be dry. Somebody long ago decided the box was a packaging matter, and it has stayed one.
Which is why a damp pallet argued as a quality problem goes nowhere. Take the two apart on the dock instead. Open a wet carton, look at the fruit inside, write down which of them the water is actually on. That one distinction decides whether you are holding a standard question or a cold chain question, and the two go to different people in different companies.
What the water costs you afterwards
Even where the fruit underneath is perfect, a wet carton has a second life ahead of it inside your building. It has to hold a stack and take a label, and then go out again looking like something a customer would pick up. Board that has drunk water is worse at every one of those, and it dries slowly and unevenly while the fruit inside it stays cold.
So ask the packhouse what board it uses and whether the board is treated against moisture. That answer changes what you can restack and how long you can hold the load before it moves. We cannot give it to you today, because no board specification has been confirmed with the grower and neither has the wrapping. The question is worth asking before a first load rather than after one.
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.