Hillwood Berries expects to pick more than 1000 tonnes of berries

Strawberries start the summer berry season, with Hillwood Berries picking on Friday and Sunday before starting the seven-day roster on Tuesday.

All is on track for a bumper season, despite the cooler start to spring, farm manager Simon Dornauf said.

“The cooler start to the season has meant the roots are better established,” Mr Dornauf said.

“We’ve got a nice flush of flowers coming through following this first crop of strawberries, so it means we’ve got fruit coming for the next six weeks. As long as the plant keeps that momentum up we should have a pretty good season ahead of us,” he said.

Hillwood Berries is expecting a minimum of 1000 tonnes of strawberries, but hoping for closer to 1100 tonnes, which it grows for Driscoll’s.

“Basically a kilo per plant is what we go for, which is the industry gold standard for this variety. If we get a kilo a plant it should be around 1150 tonnes of berries,” Mr Dornauf said.

“It’s a good cash flow crop. We planted in July and we’re getting yield and income off them from November onwards,” he said.

To pick this volume of berries, up to 250 pickers are needed, which are made up from 165 Pacific Islander workers, backpackers and other seasonal workers.

The pickers also work on Hillwood Berries’ raspberry, blackberry and blueberry crops.

“Our floricane raspberry crop starts in late November and they will grow through until after Christmas. That’s the summer crop,” Mr Dornauf said.

The primocane raspberries are part of Hillwood Berries’ new plantings from its expansion earlier this year, with the autumn crop the first pick for those plants.

“Then blackberries follow in three different crops that will come in at different times. They start mid to late November, and we will have a little sprinkling of blueberries at Christmas,” Mr Dornauf said.

Berries are picked, packed into a punnet and weighed in the field to avoid double handling, bruising and damage from picker movements.

“That helps us put a better quality berry on the shelf,” Mr Dornauf said.

“We take a complete pallet from here and it doesn’t get touched again until the supermarket. Berries are air cooled on the farm but an hour-and-a-half after picking they can be shipped out,” he said.

What makes a perfect strawberry?

“Nice colour, no bruising, good size and good shine on the berry,” Mr Dornauf said.