Fruit and Vegetable Packer

A fruit and vegetable packer works in agricultural processing facilities or packing houses to prepare fresh produce for distribution and retail sale. They inspect, grade, sort, and pack fruit and vegetables into containers or cartons according to quality standards, weight specifications, and customer requirements. The role involves operating or monitoring automated packing equipment, maintaining food safety and hygiene standards, and ensuring compliance with labelling and export regulations where applicable.

Inspect incoming fruit and vegetables for defects, bruising, size consistency, and ripeness before packing. Sort and grade produce by size, colour, and quality using visual assessment and grading charts. Position fruit or vegetables into trays, crates, or cartons ensuring even distribution and minimal damage. Weigh packed containers to ensure they meet specified weight requirements and adjust contents as needed. Apply product labels, batch codes, and origin markings to packed containers in accordance with food labelling regulations. Operate or feed produce into automated sorting, grading, and packing machinery and monitor output quality. Stack packed containers onto pallets and secure loads for storage or transport. Remove and dispose of culled, damaged, or non-conforming produce to maintain product quality standards.

The standard entry pathway requires a Certificate I or compulsory secondary education (ABS skill level 5). Specific qualification requirements vary by employer and state. Some employers may accept equivalent experience. Check yourcareer.gov.au for available courses and dewr.gov.au/skills-reform/free-tafe for subsidised training options.

The work is physically repetitive and seasonal. You'll do the same hand motions thousands of times a shift, which causes fatigue and repetitive strain injuries. Work is concentrated during harvest peaks (often casual hours), then drops off completely in slower months. Pay is typically low and unlikely to increase much without moving into supervision.

Work is rarely remote and tied to harvest seasons.

Published for ANZSCO unit group 8321, the wider group this job sits in, not for this job on its own.

This is the median for full-time employees who are not managers and are paid at the adult rate, before tax and salary sacrifice. It is a guide to what the work pays, not a wage rate.

Source: ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours, May 2025, customised report.

• Adaptability and Flexibilitycore
• Attention to Detailcore
• Basic Arithmetic and Numerical Accuracycore
• Check quality of products on the production linecore
• Clean food and beverage machinerycore
• Goods Receipt Processingcore
• Inventory Trackingcore
• Multitaskingcore
• Policy and Procedure Adherencecore
• Quality Assurance and Checkingcore
• Stock Counting and Stocktakecore
• Team Collaborationcore
• Time Management and Prioritisationcore
• Workload Self-Managementcore
• Active Listening
• Carry out checks of production plant equipment
• Check quality of raw materials
• Continuous Learning and Upskilling
• Incident Reporting
• Problem Solving
• Process Improvement Identification
• Returns Processing
• Stock Reconciliation
• Supplier Communication
• Verbal Communication

• ABS OSCA 2024, occupation definition and task statements
• ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours, May 2025, customised report.
• ABS, 2021 Census of Population and Housing based on usual place of residence (Custom Report). OSCA Experimental Estimates.

Role data is drawn from official Australian Government sources, and each figure names where it comes from. Where a role is not in the ABS classification, the page shows no government figures for it. Data may not reflect every local variation.

Where our numbers come from.

What Fruit and Vegetable Packer workers move into, from ten years of tax records.

Last updated: 30 October 2026