Tasmanian orchardist Howard Hansen grew up with a penchant for fruit growing flowing through his veins. His great-grandfather planted his first orchards on the state’s peninsula in the late 1800s and one of his six sons purchased an apple orchard in the Huon Valley in 1944, where the Hansen family have farmed ever since.
Mr Hansen subsequently brought years of informal training with him when he studied Farm Management at Marcus Oldham College from 1992 to 1994. “It was going to give me the most suitable qualification for the career I wanted,” he explained. “I knew a couple of graduates from this area who had been there as well, so was also exposed to it though them.”
It was Marcus Oldham’s focus on business management that resulted in Mr Hansen relocating to the mainland to study away from his hometown. “The options to study in Tasmania would had been ag science only, which is a little too much science-based and not enough management, which is what we were after,” said Mr Hansen, managing director of the family business, Hansen Orchards.
“It was a lot of fun, I learnt a lot, and the most important thing was meeting and living with a lot of like-minded people who were after a career in agriculture. So many of those we’re still in regular contact with today.”
The most instrumental component of the course that shaped Mr Hansen’s career was the major research project undertaken during his final year. “I looked at the opportunity of growing sweet cherries and as a result of studying it, that’s now become the most important part of our business and we’re significant growers and exporters of cherries,” he said.
Mr Hansen said the business expects to process more than 2000 tonnes of cherries through the packing facilities this year and about 15,000 bins of apples.
Earlier this year Hansen Orchards installed a 80-kilometre long rain cover, the first Australian fruit company to invest in the German technology. It has also spent $3 million on cherry sorting technology, which includes a production line of infrared cameras that checks for defects in the fruit.
