The Peru Gazette

Seth Forrence and Molly Ano inspect Cortland apples

Forrence Orchards has completed construction of its 12,000 square-foot building on the River Road and their new packing machine is operational. (Click here to see all our photos) Construction began last July and the building was completed in October. Twenty personnel were hard at work in the new building today bagging and boxing apples for shipment up and down the east coast of the United States. Seth Forrence supervises operation at this Forrence Orchard site. He said, “We’ll pack about 2,200 bushels of Cortlands today. When we get rolling we’ll be packing between 2,500 and 3,000 bushels (100,000 to 120,000 pounds) in an eight hour shift.” The Durand Wayland Corporation manufactured the packing machine in its LaGrange, Georgia plant. The machine will sort any apple variety, but it’s designed to handle larger apple varieties such as Cortland, Honeycrisp and Macoun. Most of the people working at the River Road building today usually work at Forrence’s Route 22 facility. Seth said the packing season is winding down so he would not be adding additional staff at this time. He expects to hire more personnel next fall.

Forrence’s new 160 foot long machine fills the massive 195’ x 65’ room. Crates brimming with apples are slowly immersed in water at one end of the machine. The apples quickly float to the surface and an elevator gently transports them to the sorting line. The apples then pass through buffing brushes and dryers before being inspected for flaws. Seth Forrence and Molly Ano were inspecting apples and removing undesirable apples before they entered the waxing and polishing machine. Forrence personnel remove flawed apples throughout the packing process. Seth said, “If you see many flawed apples that have been waxed and labeled, we aren’t doing our job.”

Following polishing and waxing the apples gently drop onto a conveyor and into cups where they are each weighed. Next, they pass through a labeling machine and are then conveyed for either bagging or boxing. Smaller apples drop onto a lower conveyor for transport to bagging personnel. The conveyor brings larger apples of similar weight to the appropriate carousel where personnel box them as either “Extra Fancy” or “Institutional” grade. Forrence’s typically pack between 500,000 and 600,000 bushels of apples annually. (See our story at the start of construction)