WA Winter Orchard on Wednesday 30th July 8.30am start Santa Rita Orchards Kirup

RSVP to Susie Murphy-White susan.murphy-white@dpird.wa.gov.au

Join us at Terry, Basil & Mark Martella’s Santa Rita Orchard in Kirup WA for APAL’s Future Orchards® Winter Series of orchard walk on Wednesday 30 July 2025, which will focus on “Business and block planning – building the case for improvement or redevelopment”. AgFirst Horticultural Consultants, Jonathan Brookes will lead the discussion on this topic.

On our Southern loop in Kirup, we will be joined by Ben James, Business Manager at Craigmore Sustainables. Ben worked his way up from orchard foreman in a range of orchard-related roles in Hawke’s Bay to his current role as business manager for Craigmore Sustainables.  He has a passion for helping to ensure that his workers of all levels continue to develop their skills and seek excellence on-farm.

Ben was named the Horticentre Group Horticulturalist of the Year 2024 at the Napier Ports Hawke’s Bay Primary Sector Awards. He has led the business through significant growth, with the establishment of new orchards in the regions and increased production on existing sites to around 17,000 bins this season as trees start to mature on existing operations.

The in-orchard discussion will focus on using the scorecard with the block data that has been collected.  We’ll also visit the rootstock trial that was planted in 2022 in a Lady in Red block.

RSVP to Susie Murphy-White susan.murphy-white@dpird.wa.gov.au