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Fresh Artichokes
 

 

 

  • We are the biggest artichokes growers since 1932
  • Our mechanized packing plant is located in the middle of the only area in Egypt producing artichokes.
  • We export artichokes only from our farms and contracted farmers to insure purity of the variety, highest quality and guarantee freshness.
  • Early crop in November is only available from our packing plant.
  • Within 1 hour from picking time, the artichokes are transported, sorted, sized, packed on our packing line, and put in our pre-cooling facilities.
  • Our fresh artichokes for export are characterized by their freshness, long shelf life, and highest quality.

1-Growing artichokes

The variety grown in our farms as well in all Egypt is the violet artichoke which is originated from Southern France region of Var nearby Cavaillon.
This is a precious variety which is known for its superb taste and aroma and tenderness. This artichoke variety is characterized by two external aspects:

    • The violet color over the green leaves.
    • The shape of the fruit bottom is conical.


In our farms, we constantly introduce new technologies with the help of specialized laboratories and qualified scientists and agronomists. Every year, in our experimental growing area we thrive for achieving the following targets:

  1. New selected artichoke plants which give bigger production and better quality.
  2. Growing techniques that give earlier crops.
  3. New planting techniques starting from shoots, seeds and tissue culture.
  4. Preservation of the characteristics of the precious violet artichokes.


2- Packing artichokes for export

Picking artichokes:
The fully grown artichoke plant is about 120 cm high with lot of big leaves of about 100 cm long each. One plant could carry up to 5 fruits with different sizes at the same time. When a fruit is picked, more will come. Depending on the packing orders, the fruit with adequate size are picked.
Smaller fruits are left on the plant to be picked later when they reach the desired size. The artichokes are carefully picked from the farms with long stems along with some fresh plant leaves. This insures the freshness of the artichokes during transportation.

Packing plant:
We have a state of the art custom built packing plant for artichokes.
It consists of the following stages:

  • Cutting stems
  • Sorting
  • Sizing
  • Packing
  • Palletizing
  • Pre-cooling
  • Refrigerated storage.

All this has to be done within 1 hour from the picking time. The following are the details of the main steps of packing:

Sorting:
This stage is done on special conveyors for inspection of the fruit quality. Lower grade fruits are sorted out and go to our processing plant.

Sizing and packings:
The size of the artichoke is defined by the diameter. The weight of the fruit is function of the diameter.
There are 3 main sizes:

  • Size 1:   
    6 to 7.5 cm diameter of about 180 to 200 g weight per fruit
  • Size 2:   
    7.5 to 9 cm diameter of about 225 to 250 g weight per fruit
  • Size 3:   
    9 to 11 cm diameter of about 275 to 300 g weight per fruit

Packing:

Airfreight packing: In carton boxes
Seafreight packing: Well aerated wooden boxes. Pallets carry 100 boxes.
The pack is carrying different number of fruits according to the size as follows:

  • Size 1: 30 fruits
  • Size 2: 24 fruits
  • Size 3: 20 fruits

Shipment:

The container is loaded at the end of the same packing day. Artichoke pallets after being pre-cooled and kept in the store along the day, are stuffed 20 pallets per container.
We synchronize the picking, packing, land transport and port work to be less than 6 hours from the sailing time of the vessel.


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