Higher demands
"Mechanical - and certainly manual - sorting is outdated, even in up and coming countries,"says Erwin Bakker. "Supermarkets and consumers have increasingly higher demands for their fruits and vegetables. They want high value and consistent quality. Damages are accepted less and less. When sorting mechanically or manually, there is too much damage."
Optical sorters
Delicate products like cherries were sorted by hand until recently. Bakker: "At the moment there is a lot of demand for optical sorters in this branch, as huge results can be made. We recently foresaw a 40 line sorter in the United States of our software. Up to 85% of the damages are detected, according to our customer Rivermade. The size detection is also accurate to 97%. Automation lead to a reduction in labour costs, higher productivity and a consistent quality of Rivermaid."
Passage
Another development that gives optical sorting a boost is the increasing demand for fruit and vegetables from the Asian market. "Countries like China are importing more and more fruit. The fruit sometimes has to travel for over a month. It is very important to determine beforehand what fruit will survive the passage. An optical sorter can make this selection simple."
Internal rot
Bakker also expect supermarkets and consumers will no longer accept internal rot in the future. "Consumers don't want their bag of onions to look fine on the outside but be rotting inside." This problem triggered Ellips into looking deeply into internal quality. "We developed a system which can accurately determine the internal quality of a product. We are one of few suppliers to use the 'transmittance' method for this, in which the entire fruit is lit up and not just a small part of it. Deviations such as rot, but also sugar level, dry matter, sour level and ripeness can be accurate determined this way. The system can accurately pick out the 'bad' products from the 'good' ones. This is why there are hardly any 'bad' products found with the 'good' ones. It is noticeable straight away; more products to sell. I expect internal quality in the fruit and vegetable sector - like in the US - to play a crucial role. Optical sorting is absolutely the future."