Packhouse management software from farmsoft delivers comprehensive packhouse management for fruit, vegetable, and fresh produce processors, packers, importers and exporters.

From inventory control through to sales and dispatch. farmsoft packhouse management software fills in the gaps and ensures your fresh produce processing business always has maximum quality, minimum waste, and extreme traceability.

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The farmsoft packhouse management solution can manage fresh produce from delivery, short and long term storage, washing, packing, processing, and even full food manufacturing and value adding processes. To complement these features, farmsoft packhouse management solution also manages sales orders, sales contracts, export documentation, dispatch, shipping containers, and invoice preparation. Talk to a farmsoft consultant today to find out how packhouse management can be implemented in your packhouse to increase traceability and at the same time, reduce waste through better fresh produce handling procedures.

Combine both farmsoft Farm Software AND farmsoft Packhouse Software to create a complete packhouse management solution.
Packhouse management, traceability compliance, and food safety is made easy with farmsoft packhouse management system,farmsoft drives users through the most appropriate food safety guidelines to ensure maximum food safety, and minimum waste in the packing, washing, sorting, grading and fruit packing process.

Farmsoft Packhouse Software
Packhouse management is made easy with farmsoft Fruit Packing software. Reduce paperwork, decrease administration costs, reduce waste, and increase traceability and profit. Make sales and dispatch easy.

Optionally implement the farmsoft Farm Software to manage the entire fruit and vegetable farming process, from planning, planting, farm tasks, costs, budgets, and harvesting…

Farmsoft delivers many features to provide enhancements and efficiency improvements in the processing and handling of fresh produce including:

Reduce fresh produce waste by using strict quality control systems that ensure produce that is “wasted” is actual waste. In some circumstances the packhouse may be wasting fresh produce that has been incorrectly classified during the sorting, grading, and packing processes.

Reduce fresh produce waste by ensuring first in first out (FIFO) management of both raw and processed materials. By using a strict inventory management system, the packhouse can reduce waste by ensuring fresh produce expiry dates are closely monitored and all batches and production orders are filled using the correct fresh produce based on the harvest or manufacture date.  

Reference: farm record keeping farm management farm software farm budgeting.

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Produce Traceability Initiative Solution FreshPoint

Location of the Hybrid Pallet Label On Pallets: In the same session speaker Amanda Hill, FSANZ, detailed the current systems in place should a food incident occur either side of the Tasman. It prompted a national recall of all rockmelons from Jensen Farms. Lufa Farms uses biological pest controls, such as ladybugs and wasps.

SPSS (2008) SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 17.0. SPSS Inc., Chicago Google Scholar implement a simple traceability solution, or enterprise wide business management system 1. Technical Challenges, What is the scope of this guideline? fruit and quantity packaged. The Gryphon was chosen to provide more mobility around the packing line according to the type of harvest.

Not logged in Not affiliated 178.148.2.244 Once again, SG Systems are leading the way with their Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) Solution, this time with North America's Top Fresh Produce Distributor, FreshPoint. Important as daily consumer references for premium purchase decision worldwide

E-mail Traceability allows non-contaminated produce to be ruled out for a recall or disposal. This above is what I'd call "reactive (partial) traceability". Implementing PTI: Best Practices for Hybrid Pallet Labeling The outbreak was traced back to Jensen Farms, Colorado, where inadequate sanitation procedures and the use of second-hand equipment were prominent reasons for the disease's transmission.

Laser marking cannot be falsified, it can be invisible and does not compromise product integrity and quality in any way. 30% fruit content: 16% apple, 5% strawberry, 5% blackcurrant, 4% blackberry What are you waiting for? Let us contact you today! Traceability Training and Resources

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Packer? Importer? Exporter? Processor?

Farmsoft Packhouse Software satisfies the most challenging pack house software requirements, including fully featured inventory, quality control, bar code scanning, mobile inventory, temperature zone management, traceability reporting, batch cost management, sales, dispatch and more.  Farmsoft Packhouse Software handles any fresh produce including fruit, vegetable, grain, hop, herb, coffee, seafood, shellfish, and more.  You can even perform value adding processes with farmsoft, see our food manufacturing section for details.

The farmsoft Packhouse Software helps to increase customers perceptions of quality and food safety by providing bulletproof traceability.  Download full details for the farmsoft Packhouse Software here.  

Talk to a farmsoft consultant now to discuss Packhouse Software options today!

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Farmsoft Packhouse Software makes reporting easy, and reduces administration costs.  Modern packhouses face a myriad of challenges from government regulation, quality management systems, and customer demands.  Farmsoft Packhouse Software answers each of these challenges by guiding employees through every step of the fresh produce handling and packing process.  Download a sample of farmsoft packhouse reports here.  Implementing farmsoft Packhouse Software delivers many benefits for your fresh produce packing and processing enterprise including reduced waste, increased traceability, better employee accountability and reduced paperwork.

Farmsoft’s packhouse solution is much more than just labels and inventory.  Farmsoft provides comprehensive reporting for all sections of the packhouse, extreme quality control features, and cooperative grower tracking systems.  Invoice, dispatch, and sales analysis are easy with farmsoft.

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Reference: Improve farm efficiency with FarmSoft farm management with best traceability software.

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'Building food safety management capacity'

Growers and packers focus on food safety management individually because every packhouse system is different.

Flexibility in ensuring food safety through the application of practices within the context of business operations is important. To prevent contamination and maintain low contamination rates on fruit if foodborne pathogens enter packhouses, the crucial food safety controls of wash water sanitation, equipment cleaning, and personal hygiene must work every time. Appropriate control systems and their application in practice determine food safety outputs.

In these challenging times hygiene controls have become front and centre of our thinking, as they should. This has presented an opportunity for all tiers of a business to better understand the role food safety controls play in business sustainability and job security.

Food safety management is complex. Long and intricate supply chains and new product development combined with emerging pathogens and a seasonal workforce are surrounded by a consumer base seeking greater transparency and ethical stewardship.

Are your food safety controls and their management effective?
A packhouse diagnostic indicator tool, recently developed, provides a snapshot of strengths and weaknesses in food safety management, and, identifies where improvements can be made to strengthen your organisation’s food safety system. Using the diagnostic tool quality assurance staff can measure system performance, providing evidence of effective actions, awareness of shortcomings and potential risks, and a benchmark for continual improvements. This builds food safety management capacity by raising risk awareness and therefore strengthening the food safety culture.

To underpin the accuracy of the tool and inform further development of risk assessment tools for pome fruit, we are gathering additional data on the effects of different orchard and packhouse practices on microbial risk levels through a quick anonymous self-assessment survey.

We need to know what works best to control the foodborne pathogens Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 in packhouses. Completing the survey will help us understand the relationship between controls used by industry and microbial food safety outputs.

Be part of a safer and sustainable horticulture industry
The survey asks 24 short questions about your current food safety control activities, microbial testing, and food safety performance indicators in the context of organisation and supply chain characteristics. It will only take 10 minutes to complete the survey and you will be helping inform a microbial model to assess and quantify risk through the apple supply chain.

To manage and mitigate microbial risks we must understand where they come from, how significant they are and what the optimum practices are for their control. Results of the survey feed into the diagnostic tool which in turn will allow the risk assessment model to address the risk factors in a working environment.

'Please complete the survey now to ensure apple food safety into the future.'

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Research under way to strengthen the safety of apple and pear packhouses

Australian apple and pear packhouses have the opportunity help build industry wide knowledge of absolute microbial risks, and a develop a risk assessment model to best manage them.

A short survey about current packhouse practices is being conducted by University of Tasmania microbiologist Elizabeth Frankish, to help identify which forms of specific control are most effective.

"The information gathered will be a measure of food safety system performance," Ms Frankish said. "Reporting on the collated results will allow a packhouse to compare their management strategy, identify their strengths and weaknesses and consider whether changes or improvements are needed."

She added that understanding the effect of packhouse practices in the context of the supply chain is critically important because as potential risk changes, packhouses need to be agile and respond appropriately.

"After a foodborne illness outbreak from caramel apples in the US, the Australian industry became focused on how to prevent a similar event occurring here," she said. "Although historically, apples are a very safe fruit, changes in supply chain management, consumer susceptibility to illness, bacteria themselves and the development of new innovative products that might change inherent apple characteristics could change potential microbial risks.”

Ms Frankish says the goal is to produce a risk model with a user interface so packhouses will be able to quantify the effect on risk of changing practices within their food safety system, and this will be a powerful tool to demonstrate effective management.

"The need for the research arose from the increasing quality system requirements in the horticulture industry," Ms Frankish said. "Therefore, the research is focused on characterising the hazards specific to orchard and packhouse practices in order to then quantify the food safety risk and determine what management activities are most effective in lowering that risk."

The survey asks about current control activities, microbial testing, and food safety performance indicators in the context of organisation and supply chain characteristics.

"The empirical evidence being gathered in the research is for apple orchards and packhouses," she said. "Whilst the final risk model will therefore make use of apple data, findings from elements within the model will be relevant to any wet packhouse operation that uses similar practices."

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International contacts of great use to New Zealand packhouse to meet effects of COVID-19

Te Puke-based Trevelyans is one of the largest packhouses in the Bay of Plenty. The company packs kiwifruit, avocados, limes and feijoas. It also provides orchard management services.

Managing director James Trevelyan said that when word of COVID first came on the radar, his mind immediately turned to 2010, when he was in a meeting with the then boss of Zespri discussing what was happening with PSA in Italy. He says when PSA arrived in the country later that year, he had a good understanding of what was needed in NZ.

Fast forward to January 2020, and Trevelyan was talking to a friend in Italy about the COVID-19 crisis who was involved in the kiwifruit sector in that country.

“When I put down the phone, I quickly realised that we needed to act now and talked this through with my team,” he says. “From then on, I kept in contact with this friend to learn how the Italians were dealing with the situation. I also had a friend in London to keep me briefed on the situation in Europe.”

The other person who also helped Trevelyan more effectively manage the COVID crisis was a Chinese cleaning lady at the packhouse.

“She was from Wuhan, the centre of the epidemic, and I started asking her about how her family were dealing with the pandemic,” he stated. “Later, I made contact with a Japanese man and the information that these people provided helped shape how we dealt with the crisis.”

Trevelyan says social distancing was a problem, but screens were erected to protect staff and there was a strong emphasis on meeting hygiene requirements. He admits that production at the packhouse ‘creaked and groaned’ during Alert level 4. However, he says in the end they got through the crisis better than many others.

Trevelyan estimates that he spent $500,000 dealing with COVID-19. This included obtaining extra labour, screens and tents and extra hygiene facilities.

Click here to read the full article.

UK: Hochfeld sets new packhouse parameters with Marco

As a key importer and packer of grapes for Tesco, Richard Hochfeld Group (RHG) has used Marco’s innovative Trac-IT Yield Control Module for six years to improve its pack house profitability. Since moving its grape packing facility last year, RHG has further improved yield control management with Marco’s system, over pack has been reduced to virtually zero and packing capability has almost doubled in speed. The company’s managing director Alan Guindi explains how that has been achieved and outlines the value the system could add to packing grapes at source for the UK market.

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How does RHG use Marco’s yield control system?

"The system monitors and controls every punnet packed through the course of a production run and automatically regulates the amount of fruit packed so that the average across the entire run is as close to the required target as practically possible.

"The individual packers stand at a bespoke workstation complete with intelligent weighing equipment, and are controlled by a simple, language-transparent, traffic light system. When the pack is within fractions of a gram of the target, the green lights illuminate to indicate that the punnets are at a satisfactory weight. If the packer removes an out of spec punnet they are locked out of the system until a supervisor ‘unlocks’ to allow them to resume. This means the system is an extremely efficient way of monitoring and controlling packer performance and eliminating human error, whilst virtually eradicating giveaway from the packing process."

Could this system benefit others looking to pack at source?

"There could be huge gains for the entire supply chain if we could get suppliers using Marco’s yield control system at source. In the southern hemisphere, packers will, as a matter of course, over pack by as much as 12%. Although it is largely an accepted part of the business, it is very damaging to profitability, especially when this giveaway is spread across hundreds of thousands of punnets."



Minimising pack giveaway is paramount, but how about reducing waste?

"Wastage is a significant issue – one packer told us that they are losing the equivalent of two bulk bins of grapes per line per day during the manual packing process and many of those ‘lost’ berries would have been well within acceptable specification. Where Marco’s system would come into its own would be through what they describe as 'first fill feedback', which manipulates the pre-fillers to ensure they accurately control levels of waste.

"Using our own example, since we moved to our new facility, the giveaway we have achieved in runs of more than 500 boxes has been one berry per pack either way, which in real terms is zero as you can’t put half a grape in a punnet. Waste very much depends on the quality of the fruit we’re working with, of course, but there has been a noticeable sustained reduction."

Does the yield control management system have any other knock on effects?

"We have found that there is greater efficiency throughout the packhouse as the Marco system has effectively allowed us to pack at twice the speed using the same lines. That doesn’t mean we pack twice the volume now, but we are able to pack using far fewer packhouse hours than before, driving value into the service we provide for both our suppliers and customers. Packhouse costs are generally the most expensive part of the process, so any efficiencies you can introduce into the packing process have to be more than worthwhile."

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Why isn’t everyone using Marco?

"As with all innovations, there remains a need to convince people of the need to make the initial investment. Marco provides a trial process, which first works with a packer to measure existing overpack at the end of a line, then uses a demo workstation with Marco’s yield control software installed to monitor the packing of 100 punnets or so. This simple process will give a clear before and after picture and a precise measurement of the weight saved. When multiplied by real volume and put into financial context, every packer would see the potential ROI – the results are extremely persuasive.

"I’ve already been singing the system’s virtues in Chile and South Africa and took Murray [Hilborne, md of Marco Ltd] to see some of the bigger producers amongst our supply base in Chile. We saw them too late for them to implement anything before this season, but I know that two or three of them will look to introduce Marco products into their packhouses before next season."

How can UK importers be sure that fruit packed overseas meets customer specifications?

"For suppliers packing at source, the Marco Trac-IT module includes software that would provide detailed reports by email to RHG, with the documentation and data required to verify that punnets have been packed to tight customer specifications. The fruit has to be on-spec and packed in the proper manner, of course, but there should be no reason why the weights are not controlled."

How does Marco compare with its competition?

"I have seen lots of different systems around the world that attempt to optimise packing performance, but nothing quite like the Marco system. It is the design and the innovation that makes Marco stand out from the competition, as what they have come up with is an evolution of every system that went before them. The yield control management system integrates seamlessly into the packing process and its simplicity means that anybody can use it with minimal training.

"Dealing with Murray and his team is a delight. We are fussy consumers of any product we buy and we have our views and opinions, but Marco do everything they can to satisfy our needs as quickly as possible. As far as line design goes, Marco are the best I’ve seen and I’d go as far as saying both Murray and their lead packhouse design engineer Wayne are geniuses in their field."

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