Just a little over a year ago, Michelangelo Rivoira let us visit a construction site that is now one of the most technological apple packaging and processing facilities worldwide.
"This facility was designed for large exports. At the moment, cold units store up to 1,500 tons of apples a day and around 20 trucks, loaded with 20-22 tons of produce, leave every day," explains Michelangelo.
There are 4 floors - pre-load and pre-sorting (-1), apple processing (0), service floor (1) and packaging floor (2).
The brain of the plant is represented by two vertical, 100-metre-long, automated warehouses, that work with floors -1 and 0. One is 34 metres high and stores 18 thousand bins of produce for processing, the other is 28 metres high and stores 2,000 pallets of produce ready for shipping.
The extraordinary thing is that the entire plant is completely managed by software that enables the checking and tracking of incoming and outgoing produce in real time. The vertical warehouses are managed by carts that move quickly. There are no forklift trucks nor operators (except for one that monitors the machinery) on the pre-loading and pre-sorting floors. There are instead, four laser-guided AGV carts that supply the sorter and take the fruit to a shuttle that then takes it to different transelevators.
This plant is an example of the highest levels of automation, technology and innovation. Gruppo Rivoira has doubled its processing capacity from 20 tons to 40 tons/hour of processed and packaged apples.
Contacts:
Gruppo Rivoira/Kiwi Uno
Via Mattona 174/C
Verzuolo (CN)
Tel.: +39 0175 280811
Email: info@rivoira.it
Web: www.rivoira.it