In the outer areas of Melbourne, where the flower farmers do their work, cold storage is critical when picking season comes round. The owners of Sky Valley Flowers grow Peonies and Lilies for the Melbourne markets each year.
Every year they wrestle with the challenge of keeping the flowers alive without a cold storage system. Their neighbours, who operate a very large flower farm face the additional problem of being requested by the Mains power authority to periodically remove themselves from the grid.
Last picking season, Black Stump’s deployable, containerised solar powered cold room was used by Sky Valley to store picked flowers keeping them in pristine condition ready for transport to the market. Placing a cut flower directly into cold storage extends the life of that flower by several days. This means that the farmer can optimise his harvesting time and plan his trips to the market secure in the knowledge that he has premium product for sale.
For Sky Valley, it also meant the additional bonus of using the Back Stump cold room to make direct sales to passing trade and local businesses. A very cool result for all!