Setting Geoff Lewis apart from many in the industry is his commitment to innovation. For example, when a Japanese customer in 1994 expressed concern about the use of methyl bromide to kill pests in the crop he hired a Crop and Food Research expert and, with government funding, devised a ‘non chemical’ solution which gained MAF and now MPI approval. Essentially it uses warm water and time control to kill insects in the crop
“Our last project was high speed grading,” Lewis says. “We couldn’t get accuracy with our other computerised grader so in a research project with Massey University we developed a high speed grader very accurate in weight measurement.
“Because we are selling small 80 gram bunches to Japan, if we send one over and it happens to weigh 90 grams we have given away 10 extra grams of weight we won’t get paid for, and we must pay the air freight on it. So accuracy in weighing for export is important.”
One of Lewis’s sons works in the field of ‘mechatronics’, a design process involving mechanical, electrical, computer and control engineering. He’s looking at mechanical harvesting which could revolutionise the industry.
“Currently all asparagus is harvested manually with a long knife. In 6km of rows per hectare, if you have 100ha of asparagus, you have 600km of rows to harvest daily.
“So you can understand the distances the pickers have to travel to harvest the crop. But it is difficult to automate. [Automating] it will save an awful lot of walking and bending down.”
