Colombia. Let's know below a refrigeration project for one of the most important companies in the avocado sector in Colombia, it is a renovation of cold rooms carried out by Industrias Refridcol.
One of the goals of every hass avocado exporter is to ensure that their product reaches its destination at its point of ripeness. Market demand continues to increase and the great challenge of this promising "green gold" is to overcome the difficulties of production and post-harvest where there is a greater risk of rejection.
Although the product can continue to meet its organoleptic qualities, it is enough with some stain or slight deformation in the avocado to avoid passing the strict export requirements and reach international shelves. Among the frequent problems that avocado production is exposed to are:
- Direct exposure to the sun that can cause burns and color change to the shell.
- Bad cut by coteros in the collection of fruits.
- Fruit collection
- Problems of dry matter, pre-cold and conservation of avocado in cold rooms.
- Avocado selection room
These four problems affecting the avocado market, Green West has fully identified. This Colombian company is the result of the merger of entrepreneurs with extensive experience in the export of fruits and vegetables with a vision that they consider indispensable to achieve by reaping achievements in their business career: to be leaders in the international avocado market, to be recognized for having products of excellent quality guaranteeing the safety and volumes required by their customers.
Following this premise, the company Green West opted for the expansion of its cold rooms for the preservation of avocado in order to continue increasing the number of exports within which countries such as Holland, France, Germany are destined. Italy, Spain and Canada.
In an interview with Yhon Mejía, coordinator of the maintenance area of the plant, he indicated that the Californian tunnel and the warehouses refrigerated by Refridcol have allowed to increase the storage capacity, going from two containers to five containers.
Among the headaches in avocado producers is the percentage of dry matter and this is not alien to Green West, the Hass avocado must have an optimal correlation between dry matter and oil of the pulp of the fruit, as a reference for harvesting avocado Hass, a minimum dry matter index of 24% is proposed as an indicator of the maturity for harvest of Avocado Hass grown in Colombia according to to the report submitted in avocadossource.com
It should be remembered that the avocado is a climacteric fruit so it has to be harvested in the state of physiological maturity to reach the appropriate characteristics of flavor and consistency, hence the importance of having an adequate ripening process, which does not reach either very biche or very ripe, because also as the avocado ripens the oil levels begin to increase.
Californian Tunnel
In the words of Jhon Mejía assures the following: "One of the perceived improvements very gratifying for us in this process was to be able to receive fruit with a dry matter in avocados of up to 29% - 30%; now that we have this service we can do the packaging process and enter the fruit into the tunnel, making the pulp temperature drop by 5 or 6 °C, reducing ripening times in order to preserve the quality of the product for much longer," said Mejía.
It is important to clarify that the longer the fruit passes to cold processes, the greater the moisture the avocado will lose. Hence the importance of developing a Californian tunnel that would reduce cooling times. On the other hand, the person in charge of ensuring the quality in the cold processes of the avocado indicated that with this development the frequency of dispatch has increased "previously we despechábamos one container per week now with the tunnel we can do 3 or 4 dispatches per week".
With the construction of the cold rooms for avocado, the Green West company reduced the cooling times in addition to being able to provide additional services in Golupa. Tests carried out in the Californian tunnel with other types of fruits recently by the company's quality team, eventicing that it lowers the temperature properly optimizing the quality.
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