Bananas Ripened By Gas
p. 38 · Read in the full issue
Every week about 10,000 bunches of bananas are ripened in Birmingham by gas. Forty ripening rooms are now in use at one of the large warehouses adjoining one of the main railway depots, and by means of a band conveyor bunches of green bananas are taken straight from the railway trucks to the ripening rooms.
The temperature in these rooms is main tained between 60 degrees and 65 degrees Fahrenheit, the heat being supplied by gas burners controlled by an extremely sensitive thermostat. After about a week’s treatment the bananas are perfectly ripe, and are then graded for quality and size and packed into boxes of about 100.