Podcast: No room for error – inside the perfect packhouse

If there's one facility that needs to be flawless and run like a well-oiled machine, it's your farming packhouse where the layout, equipment, ventilation, and hygiene all play a huge role

A proper packhouse is a crucial component of the post-harvest handling process, where agricultural products are sorted, cleaned, packed, and prepared for distribution. In this episode of Farmer’s Inside Track, Siyabonga Cele, audit coordinator at Emensi Farming, shares some valuable insights on keeping your packhouse in a state of perfection.

Cele says, “The hygiene of the products is one of the major importance of how to handle a product, that’s why you need a packhouse. Because in most cases a lot of the vegetables we as farmers grow, they have to be sold to customers, which requires a certain level of quality.”

Layout and equipment

Cele explains that this is where the packhouse plays a major role. The episode also explores the importance of a proper packhouse layout. Cele points out that a packhouse does not have a normal layout like a building.

Cele also talks about the kind of equipment used in the packhouse, depending on the type of product that is being packed.

“Some might be high-risk products, which might need high, intensive-care units. Some are low-risk products which don’t need that much care in terms of packing the product itself.”

He shares the importance of a packing line and the purpose it serves, measuring equipment such as scales, pallets, and forklifts to move the products and more.

Catching up with a #SoilSista

This week’s episode also features #SoilSista Kamogelo Mogadima, who has been cultivating crops and raising poultry on her 15-hectare plot since 2016. Listen to her story of agricultural triumph.