27 hectare D'VineRipe is Australia's largest greenhouse operation
"This is the largest high-tech glasshouse in Australia only producing tomatoes, nine varieties, from small to large," said D'VineRipe general manager Jon Jones. The company is owned by the Victor Smorgon Group
"We supply tomatoes to Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and Costco in the Sydney and Melbourne markets all year round. They prefer us because we have a consistent product."
Clearly, with an annual yield of 15,000 tonnes and almost 400 staff, D'VineRipe is no small fry.
Since building the first 8ha of glasshouse in 2007, the company has gone on to be a market leader, adopting state-of-the-art technology to maximise yields.
Today there are 1400 rows of tomatoes - equivalent to 350km.
"The major difference between us and field-grown tomatoes is that one hectare of glasshouse-grown tomatoes produces 10 times the amount grown in a same-size open field," Jon said.
"Glasshouses give consistently higher crop yields and quality than field crops. Our flavour is also more consistent."
Growing tomatoes in a protected environment means crops are less susceptible to disease, bugs and extreme weather compared with open-field crops, while running costs are lower.
"There's less reliance on sprays and a guaranteed year-round supply," Jon said.
D'VineRipe's tomatoes are sourced from seed producers under such trademarks as Romatherapy baby roma tomatoes, Saladette truss tomatoes and Il Bello Rosso cherry truss tomatoes.
Seedlings are propagated off-site, with suppliers required to produce grafted seedlings of a particular height and leaf span specific to each variety.
At 35 days old, seedlings are packed and transported to Two Wells, 40km north of Adelaide, where they are transplanted and grown hydroponically.
The first crops are ready for harvest within about 12 weeks of the plants arriving at the glasshouse.
As there is no soil involved in hydroponics, nutrients and water are delivered directly to the plants, with vines trained up wire trellises.
Jon said a huge labour component was pollination. Tomato flowers are normally wind and bumblebee pollinated, and there is not enough air movement in a greenhouse to ensure good pollination.
"Bees don't pollinate tomatoes, bumblebees do. We aren't allowed to have hives of bumblebees here - quarantine puts them in the same category as rabbits or cane toads - so we have to pollinate by hand," Jon said.
"Three to six times a week, staff members touch every single plant. If we could use bumblebees the end-product would be more consistent. Using humans means tomatoes can be green at the bottom of the plant and red at the top."
Once picked, automated, self-guided robotic trolleys transport tomatoes to a packing room for processing, the aim being to get them to their final destination within 24 hours of coming off the vine.
The glasshouse complex is a most remarkable piece of technology. "We control everything here except for the light and photosynthesis," Jon said. "Most of our work is automated. From the point staff log in to do a job, we track each part of their day.
"We know who they are, what row they've picked from, how many kilos they've picked and the time they picked."
Designed and constructed by a Dutch glasshouse builder, the series of 12 glasshouses minimise shade and maximise light.
There are about 130,000 panes of strengthened glass on the roofs and 45,000 panes on the walls, with each pane the largest so far used in glasshouse construction in Australia. Panes filter UV rays and allow more useful light to reach the plants, with internal steel structures painted white to reflect light and boost crop yield.
For irrigation and warmth, the complex has about 300km of drip piping and 510km of heating pipe.
An evaporative cooling system maintains an optimum temperature - averaging 21 degrees over a 24-hour period - irrespective of outside conditions.
"It can get over 40 here in summer, so it's crucial we're able to control the indoor temperature," Jon said.
Power from diesel and natural gas creates electricity, heat and carbon dioxide. Once generated, heat and CO2 is returned to the glasshouse and any excess sold to the national grid.
Most of the glasshouse's water is sourced from Adelaide's waste water, which is treated before being piped to D'VineRipe's own treatment plant. A reverse osmosis plant further filters the water, sending 85 per cent to the crop and 15 per cent waste water to an evaporative pond.
In addition, the glasshouse complex collects rainwater from the roof and treats it before using it on the tomato crop, which saves about 520 megalitres of town water a year.
Considering the industrial scale of the enterprise, it's no surprise that Jon doesn't see himself in the business of agriculture.
"We classify ourselves as a manufacturing facility, not a farm," he said.
Source: Sarah Hudson, Weeklytimesnow.com.au