Con van der Voort, of Ettrick, bought 106ha of land near Alexandra about a year ago and has so far planted 18ha of it with 27,000 apple trees.
He plans to plant another 30,000 next year and keep going from there.
When asked the reason for the expansions, he said "it’s just what I do".
"You’ve got to have a bit of faith in the industry. At the moment the apple market is OK, but I’ve been in the industry since 1960, so I’ve seen a lot of ups and downs."
While apple picking would start early next month, these trees would not be productive for another three years.
"I am very pleased with the growth of these young trees."
Last year he also planted another 10,000 trees at his other orchards.
He did not know exactly how many hectares of plantings he owned, but it was "several hundred acres" across Ettrick, Dumbarton, Roxburgh East and Earnscleugh, Mr van der Voort said.He is Central Otago’s largest apple grower, producing more than 600,000 18kg cartons a year.
While Ettrick had a good apple-growing climate, Earnscleugh’s sunshine would be better for their colour, he said.
It was also a great area to experiment with stone fruit such as cherries and he now had small plantings of stone fruit in Roxburgh East.
The new apple plantings were mainly of the Jazz, Galaxy and Fuji varieties, which were popular in today’s market.
They were shipped to between 40 and 50 countries across the world, Mr van der Voort said.
"We’re putting the trees much closer together than in the past. We are trying to lift production so we can stay with it."
Another one of his projects was fixing up an eight-bedroom brick farm house on the property he called "The Castle", which had concrete sections which were never completed.
"In the early 1900s, I think, it was built. There are very few of these buildings around, so I want to protect it."
He had no idea when renovations would be finished, or what he would do with it once it was completed, he said.
"I have people saying ‘get rid of it quick, [it] will cost a fortune’, but I like it."
He was also tidying up the trees lining the drive to make it look "presentable".
He bought the new land from L&M Mining, which bought it from Earnscleugh Station for its gold-mining venture.
L&M never mined the land as the project stopped in 2014, five years into a seven-year plan, because of a drop in the price of gold.
He did not want to divulge the cost of the expansion, but was "pouring a lot of money" into it.
Con van der Voort’s operation
• Exports 600,000 18kg apple cartons per year.
• Employs 250 people per season.
• Planted 27,000 new apple trees in Earnscleugh last year.
• Plans to plant another 30,000 there in the next year.
