"The line started production on May 5th," said O-G PACKING plant manager Tom Gotelli talking about new installations. "We've been in business for over 60 years. I'm third generation, our family loves the cherry business. Now we are excited to have this UNITEC machine doing the electronic sorting and sizing for us. It's a new revolution that's taking place. It's extremely exciting and it's doing very well, we are very proud of it," he says.
UNITEC CHERRY SORTING TECHNOLOGIES are radically changing the way cherries are processed for the fresh fruit market. "It takes 30 pictures of each cherry" – Tom Gotelli continues - "when it goes through the cameras and deciphers what's good, what's bad and what size it is. With this technology we have through UNITEC electronic sorting and sizing it sees the fruit better. We can decipher how hard we want to pull on the fruit, pull out defects".
"It makes our job much simpler and it gives us a better product in the long run," Tom Gotelli added. The new electronic cherries sorting system at O-G PACKING it's a 32 lanes sorter equipped with CHERRY_VISION©, the innovative system that offers no-destructive detection of the external and internal quality of cherries.
UNICAL_ 200 Cherry© is the innovative electronic sorter designed for processing cherries. It’s characterized by its high productivity (about 108,000 fruits/hour/lane) both greatly appreciated by users. It can grade cherries by size and color.
CHERRY_VISION© is the innovative sorting system developed and manufactured (hardware and software) entirely in-house by UNITEC for on-line, non-destructive detection of external and internal cherry quality. It automatically removes debris and defects and it's able to select each cherry on basis of skin defects and shape with high precision and reliability. It allows a quality selection never achieved before, improving processing efficiency through the highest standards of functionality and reliability.
Thanks to this innovative system cherry packers can reduce the hand labor dedicated to quality selection by manual sorting and increase processing efficiency, maximizing product quality and shelf-life of cherries with marked savings in processing costs. These successful technologies offer higher quality standardization, better presentation of cherries placed on the market and more added value to final product.
The success of UNITEC technologies is confirmed by the 640 lanes already sold in over 23 countries worldwide; 425 of these lanes are equipped with the CHERRY_VISION©. In the US, 96 of the 97 lanes installed are equipped with CHERRY_VISION©.
"The UNITEC Company is fantastic to work with, when they came in they came on seven containers and it was all assembled in order how it was supposed to go together and it worked extremely well. They did a fantastic job, they are very professional and professional in their work. Everybody is happy about it, the growers, the buyers and long run it’s going to give our consumers a great product," Gotelli said.
O-G Packing is one of California's largest cherry packers.
UNITEC, a group specialized in the design and manufacture of dedicated innovative technologies and systems for processing, sorting, and selecting over 35 kinds of fresh fruit and vegetables, has recently established the new subsidiary UNITEC USA with headquarters in STOCKTON (CA), to be closer to its American Customers and help them with its technologies and professionalism.
UNITEC USA is a part of a network of branches in some of the leading fruit- and vegetable-producing countries (such as France, Spain, Chile, and Argentina) and it works along by a sales structure that permits to meet the requirements in the 23+ countries in which UNITEC operates.
UNITEC USA is fully operational with after-sales staff. The spare parts warehouse is operational as well.
