"It was a huge investment, but if the machine does what it's supposed to, we expect our sorting capacity to put 20 to 30% more pears in the crates, as the machine also sorts by quality. We can take out outer quality checks at the end of the line. This will be a huge reduction in labour costs."
"It's a completely different machine to those already on the market," says Roel Vermeulen. "The machine no longer has a stepflow. The existing machines sort with cups and it is often difficult to get one pear neatly into a cup. This machine is like and endless piano, in which the pear fall according to size. The transition from the stepflow to the cups was always a damage sensitive area and we are now skipping it. There is less transition. This new machine is a four-liner, but is comparable to a six line cup machine in capacity."
"We can also set the sorting of the external class to class I and II. Hail or tear marks can all be sorted out in a separate exit. This means that we expect to barely have to check the quality and so be able to put away more pears in an hour," says Roel. "Based on LED lighting there are also cameras in every line of the machine for the internal quality control. This means we can sort certain parties that just can't be sorted otherwise. The advantage of LED compared to, for instance, halogen, is that it's much stabler and once set remains set for years."
Colleagues are welcome to view the machine soon, but Flevofruit wants to test it first.
