Fruit tray shortage after fire

23-01-2012 | Marie Taylor

Pipfruit packhouses had half their year's supply of trays destroyed in a massive fire in Hastings last week.

It couldn't have happened at a worse time for the industry as it gears up to start harvest in mid February.

But an alternative supplier Huhtamaki, a Finnish company with a plant in Otahuhu, is putting on extra shifts to increase production and is trying to source trays from its plants in Melbourne, South Africa and South America.

David Adolph, Huhtamaki's general manager, said they were pulling out all the stops to help after the fire at Hawk Packaging's plant in Tomoana Rd, Hastings, which began late last Tuesday night.

Hawk Packaging uses recycled paper to make moulded fibre trays for packaging pipfruit and eggs. This was the third and largest fire on the site in the past year, causing extensive damage and throwing huge embers into the sky. Ash rained down across many kilometres of the Heretaunga Plains afterwards.

Fuelling the fire were stacks of wooden pellets and it was so hot radiated heat from the fire cracked a fire appliance windscreen.

"It was as big as it gets, and had potential for extensive spread," said Fire Service assistant area commander in Napier Allan Bamber.

Investigations are continuing into the cause of the fire, but police said it did not appear to be suspicious.

The chief executive of Pipfruit New Zealand, Peter Beaven, said the fire had not only destroyed the trays but also the company's ability to produce any more this season.

The pipfruit harvest begins in mid February and few packhouses had much packaging on hand yet, he said.

It was lucky the fire was contained within the Hawk Packaging premises, as coolstores were only metres away from the fire. "It's a salutary lesson for us all about managing risk."

Fourteen fire appliances from as far away as Palmerston North fought the blaze, focusing on protecting neighbouring businesses and homes.

"Because of the difficulty of putting out material that was burning we had to take an aggressive defensive role to save surrounding buildings," Bamber said.

Hawk Packaging employed 55 staff, but none would lose their jobs Hawk Packaging's owner and managing director Tim Combs was reported as saying.

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