Earlier this year GP Graders trialled the new MultiView camera at a snack tomato grower in Central Queensland and according to Stuart Payne Director at GP Graders the results have been excellent.
"We can now “see” the ends of elongated snack tomatoes such as mini Roma and grape tomatoes that weren’t otherwise obvious using top down cameras only. In particular we can see stem damage and blossom end rot (BER) which is a common problem in the snack tomato category.
"We've been working hard on software and hardware upgrades that will continue to be rolled out in the next few weeks. This is very exciting and 'world first technology' in this field."
GP Grader's primary focus has been on improving detection of fresh splits on cherry tomatoes, a notoriously difficult defect to capture. With the planned enhancements they are expecting to see at least an 80% improvement for splits detection, exclusively, along with an array of other improvements.
Stuart said they have orders from all over the world for their technology: new cherry lines in Greece, grape and stone fruit lines in the US, stone fruit, cherry tomato, blueberry lines in Australia.
"We have hundreds of lanes of gpVision™ being installed around the world for existing customers keen to replace the old technology we used to use.
"For the upcoming Australian and Chile seasons, we're literally booked out for machinery builds. Business has exploded this year. There is a recognition of a continued labour shortage but also an embracing of our new gpVision™ software proving a superior outcome. The grading results are real and better than anything else out there in the categories we are targeting. We've expanded our Australian team of operators to support our local customers better this season, we are really growing in the Agtech space. We're on track for a record year in both new machine sales and upgrades to gpVision™.
"These outstanding results serve as recognition of our superior sorting technology achieving favourable outcomes for our customers and clearly, the word is spreading organically."
With teams across three continents, travel restrictions have not proven to hinder GP Grader's progress too much but Stuart said it has not been easy as shipping has become substantially more expensive, slower and less reliable but they have compensated for these short-comings and delivered on their promises.
New developments
"We have a huge pipeline of new developments in mechanical innovations, electronics and software development. We have some seriously exciting developments coming for stone fruit defect detection.
"In early 2022, GP Graders will be officially releasing a grading platform that is going to absolutely revolutionise peach, apricot, plum and nectarine sorting, achieving accuracy results un-precedented in the industry. Growers and packers should register their interest as soon as possible because demand for this technology is going to be massive."
