4° 



February, 191 5 



The Prc-cooling of Canadian Fruits' 



Edwin Smith, Supt., Fruit Cold Storage, Grimmby, Out. 



THF. pre-cooling of fruit for shipment 

 is commonly supposed to be a prac- 

 tice of recent origin. Pioneers are 

 not often heard about, and this is 

 true with the people who started the work 

 of cooling- fruit before shipment. The first 

 man to develop pre-cooling as a special 

 process in the fruit shipping industry was 

 Mr. Parker Earle, of Cobden, 111. Like all 

 pioneers he met with a great deal of grief 

 in developing new methods for tender fruit 

 shipments. After repeated losses in the 

 latter sixties in attempts to ship strawber- 

 ries to Chicago and Detroit in the then 

 crude type of refrigerator cars, he con- 

 structed a cooling house in his packing 

 shed at Anna, 111. By leaving his berries 

 in this house for twenty-four hours to cool 

 off, then sending them to Chicago by ex- 

 press, he found that they arrived in much 

 better shape than those which were sent 

 as soon as picked. He then went to Chi- 

 cago and secured what was then the best 

 refrigerator car that had been made, the old 

 Tiffany car, built to carry dairy products. 

 After cooling the berries in the cooling 

 house they were placed io the car and sent 

 to Chicago. The venture was a complete 

 success from the start and resulted in plac- 

 ing on the Chicago market more solid and 

 better-keeping berries than had ever before 

 been seen there. 



The date of this first successful ship- 

 ment was 1872. Rapid development in the 

 refrigeration of fruits for transportation 

 proceeded from this date, but not until 

 after Harold Powell, of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture, started his not- 

 able investigations and employed pre-cool- 

 ing for the shipment of Georgia peaches 

 to New York in 1904 did we commonly hear 

 of the much-used term "pre-cooling." 



The results of Powell's experimental 

 trials and demonstration in California were 

 so effectively brought to the attention of 

 the railroads and shipping organizations 

 that not only did they start the erection of 

 large pre-cooling plants, but they also took 

 steps to remedy their handling methods so 

 that the possibilities of successful orange 

 shipments to far-off markets mounted to 

 undreamed-of heights and popularized the 

 expression "pre-cooling," so that it has 

 ever since received widespread attention. 

 Since then pre-cooling Las been applied to 

 the shipment of practically all tender fruits 

 from various districts in North America. 



DEVELOPMENT IN CANADA 



The need of improving transportation 

 facilities has been felt in various fruit dis- 

 tricts in Canada for a long time. Exces- 

 sive losses in shipping tender fruits from 

 Ontario to the western and maritime pro- 

 vinces, losses in exportation of fall apples 

 and pears from Nova Scotia, losses in 

 prairie shipments of small fruits from the 

 Lower Fraser Valley and peaches from the 

 Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, have 

 all called for discussion, investigation, and 

 remedy, in which the word "pre-cooling" 

 has been heard more or less frequently. 

 This has led to early attempts at cooling 

 fruits at Grimsby. Ontario, with various 

 trial shipments to the west; the establish- 

 ment of the St. Catharines Cold Storage 

 and Forwarding Co. took place and started 

 western shipments. In 1912 the Govern- 

 ment of British Columbia appropriated 



•Extract from an twldreee delivered at the last 

 annual convention of the Ontario Fruit Growers' 

 AeBociation. 



funds to carry on pre-cooling investigations 

 amd in 1913 installed a pre-cooling plant 

 having a capacity of two cars per day in 

 the warehouse of the Summerland Fruit 

 Union . 



Owing to a failure of plans of fruit grow- 

 ers in the Niagara Peninsula whereby a 

 large central pre-cooling plant for the dis- 

 trict was being promoted active attention 

 of the Dominion Government was called in- 

 to this field and by the latter part of 1913 

 the erection of an experimental cold stor- 

 age for pre-cooling was started at Grimsby, 

 Ont., under the direction of Mr. J. A. Rud- 

 dick. Dairy and Cold Storage Commis- 

 sioner. This plant was completed previous 

 to and initiated during the fruit season 

 of 1914. 



TYPES OF PRB COOLING PLANTS 



There are two general types of pre-cool- 

 ing plants using distinctive systems, viz., 

 car pre-cooling and warehouse pre-cooling. 

 With the former a blast of cold air is blown 

 through a loaded refrigerator car for sev- 

 eral hours previous to shipment, while with 

 the latter, or warehouse type, the fruit is 

 placed in a cold storage room, cooled down 

 to from 38 to 40 degrees Fahr. and then 

 loaded in an iced car in a cold condition. 



With either type of pre-cooling plant one 

 of two general sources of refrigeration may 

 be used — ice or mechanical refrigeration. 

 The modern method of using ice is with 

 the Gravity Brine System, in which the 

 temperature of the brine is cooled to from 

 to 10 degrees Fahr. by rapidly melting 

 ice with salt about the primary coils in an 

 insulated tank. The primary coils being 

 connected with the secondary coils in the 

 cold storage or in the "coil-room bunker." 

 a circulation of cold brine is immediately 

 set up as soon as the brine in the upper 

 or primary coils becomes more dense from 

 becoming cold. The process of mechanical 

 refrigeration is based upon the condensing 

 of a vapor (ammonia, carbon dioxide, or 

 sulphur dioxide) to a liquid by the use 

 of pressure and cold water, and then eva- 

 porating the liquid in coils placed in the 

 cold storage or in the "coil-room bunker." 

 The term mechajnical is derived from the 

 mechanical compressor used to place the 

 vapor under great pressure. 



WAREHOUSE PLANTS 



In designing the Grimsby plant the type 

 selected was of the warehouse design us- 

 ing ice as a refrigerating medium in a 

 Cooper Gravity Brine System. The ware- 

 house type was selected for the following 

 reasons: (1) The car pre-cooling plant is 

 not economical since a large part of the 

 refrigeration is lost through connections 

 with the car, leaky car doors, vents and 

 insufficient insulation in refrigerator cars. 

 The warehousfe plant is well insulated, and 

 self-contained, with a minimum loss of re- 

 frigeration through transmission ; (2) The 

 car pre-cooling plant is not efficient be- 

 cause faulty connections and misdirected 

 air currents that are unavoidable in cool- 

 ing a loaded car, result in cooling uneven- 

 ly throughout the car. In a warehouse the 

 cold air is evenly distributed through per- 

 forations in a false floor and false ceiling, 

 so that all fruit is cooled evenly and thor- 

 oughly to from 38 to 40 degrees, with no 

 possibility of freezing fruit in one part of 

 the room and having it at a temperature 

 of from 45 to 50 degrees in another. 



(3) The car pre-cooling plant causes de- 

 lay between picking and cooling, as the 

 car has to be loaded and shipped to the 



pre-cooling plant before the cooling can 

 be started. A few hours in the heat before 

 pre-cooling means the shortening of the 

 life of the fruit several days. If too much 

 haste is used to overcome this, the fruit 

 is roughly handled and the car poorly 

 loaded, which will more than undo the 

 benefit of pre-cooling. With the warehouse 

 type the fruit is cooled as soon as packed 

 and loaded while cold. Capable experts 

 who load cars day after day at a pre-cooling 

 warehouse ensure careful and secure load- 

 ing ; (4) The car pre-cooling plant is not 

 wholly adaptable to the cooling of decidu- 

 ous fruits. To cool a car in four hours, it 

 is necessary to have the blast of cold air 

 near 10 degrees. Peaches, plums, and to- 

 matoes will soon freeze at this temperature. 

 If a longer time than four hours is taken, 

 the capacity of the plaint is cut down and 

 congestion follows; (5) A warehouse plant 

 offers the opportunity of assembling cars 

 of fruit during the dull season, making 

 shipments of tender fruits possible that 

 would be impossible with the car pre-cool- 

 ing plant; (6) The warehouse pre-cooling 

 plant is used as an apple and general cold 

 storage after the prc-cooling season. This 

 greatly lessens the heavy overhead expense 

 of a plant which would otherwise be used 

 but a few weeks during the summer. 



HOW FRUIT IS HANDLED 



With our present arrangement fruit is 

 brought in from the orchards as soon as 

 picked and packed, loaded from the drays 

 to specially designed trucks, which are 

 then run into one of the four pre-cooling 

 rooms. Each room holds considerably over 

 a carload of boxes or baskets loaded on 

 trucks, and has a perforated floor and ceil- 

 ing through which a circulation of cold 

 air is blown from the coil room by means 

 of large sixty-inch fans. Electric thermo- 

 meters are placed in the bottom and top 

 tiers of fruit packages, and as soon as the 

 fruit is entered the doors are closed, the 

 fans set in motion, and cooling is started. 

 By means of the electric thermometers the 

 temperature of the fruit is taken from the 

 outside, and as soon as sufficiently cooled 

 for shipment (38 to 40 degrees), loading 

 takes place. 



Fruit once cooled down must not be ex- 

 posed to the warm air until it reaches the 

 market, consequently a cold corridor ex- 

 tends from the pre-cooling rooms with an 

 adjustable vestibule to the refrigerator 

 car door. Through this the trucks of cold 

 fruit are run directly into the cold car, 

 thus preventing exposure, rough and un- 

 necessary handling of packages and great- 

 ly cutting down the work and time neces- 

 sary for loading. 



THB PAST SEASON 



Although handicapped by not having a 

 peach crop to handle, the season of 1914 

 was an active one at the Grimsby plant. 

 The first experimental shipment was made 

 by the Dominion Department of Agricul- 

 ture, July 16th, when 2,277 baskets of 

 Montmorency cherries were pre-cooled and 

 shipped to Winnipeg, arriving there in 

 splendid condition on July 22nd. The fruit 

 was sold on commission by the Scott Fruit 

 Company for 60c per basket. M the same 

 time other sour cherries were selling in 

 Winnipeg markets for from 38c to 42c. This 

 speaks for the superior quality of the pre- 

 cooled fruit. 



From this time on the growers and ship- 

 pers took advantage of the plant and thirty- 

 five cars of cherries, plums, pears, tomatoes 



