SSS Strawberries

She's old but she is a beauty. She has been with SSS Strawberries from day 1, from Perth to Bundaberg and she is still roaring strong.

With picking trolleys like these back pains are subtracted from the equation, Sean can enjoy more a productive day.

With the style of bikes SSS has for their pickers there is no more heat concern what so ever.

Inside the packing shed, the packers are competing for the most punnets packed on the day.

Sorting strawberries is a lot more difficult than meets the eye. There are marked fruits and rotten fruits that needs to be separated, and the selected sizes have to almost exactly be similar to fit the punnets perfectly without bruising and packers have to ensure they meet the weight requirement.

Even though Yurika & Chi Chi have been in the strawberry field over 3 months, they still cannot resist the sweet succulent tastes of fresh strawberries cultivated by SSS Strawberries.

These punnets are ready to be packed and trucked away to market stores all over Queensland.

Multiple strawberry fruits sprout from its healthy plant.

French backpacker Pierre smiles at the camera as he enjoys picking in the SSS Strawberry field.

Basket of sweet berries from SSS Strawberries.

An unusually GIGANTIC size strawberry found in the SSS Strawberries farm.

Gina inspecting each boxes making sure they meets Market Quality requirements.

SSS Strawberries' Strawberry Field stretches over 90 acres of ground making them one of the largest berry farm in Australia.

SSS Strawberries introduces "The Strawberry Shop" to Bundaberg in 2011. Prior to the shop, local customers and travelers can buy direct from the packing shed, however The Strawberry Shop is proving to be much more sensible as it is air-conditioned thus keeping the strawberries cool; and also there is a large viewing window spanning from one end of the shop to the other allowing customers to view the packing production from within the shop keeping them out of harms way.

In previous years, Trucks were used to transport strawberries from the field to the arctic room.

Yay group photo! Everybody was rushing in for this photo.

Ben scanning the bottom of the punnets for marked or rotten fruits.

Taiwanese twins Anita & Angela picked their last tray of strawberry for the season before moving on to new adventures.

Unloading cages is a full time job at SSS. In the field, these steel framed cages are needed on every headland 20 meters apart, 3 to 5 ahead of the pickers as they progress through the scourging hot day. The cages are fitted with shade cloths at a 95% UV blockage rate. The cages are readily placed in position for pickers to store their freshly picked fruits as they exit their rows; keeping them out of reach of the sun's heat. In the shed, the Cages containing picked fruits are needed every 15 minutes for cooling and then packed for transport.

Trays with freshly picked strawberries are placed in steel frame cages for shade and ease of transport.

Mathew rarely has any chance of setting his foot on the ground as his role is to upload and unload cages through out the picking day. In instances like these, when he is both feet on the ground girls like Emmy are quick to snap a photo with him.

Mia and Dante inspecting the strawberry bushes intensively to find and eradicate excess sucker weeds (sprouting from the crown of the bush) called runners.