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US (MT): New cherry camera selects pick of the crop
Cherry trees run in lots around the Glacier Fresh processing and packaging plant, bare and dormant with the winter’s cold. Inside the plant, Cody and Dusti Herring are preparing for the 2012 harvest season and waiting for their new cherry sorter—a camera.
Their five-year-old processing line is broken into pieces. The old sizer, a series of rows made from metal rollers stacked on top of each other designed to drop smaller cherries to the lowest rows, will be replaced with a camera that takes photos of individual cherries as they go by on a chain conveyor.
“There’s no impact damage,” Cody Herring said. “It’s the compounding impacts that make them soft.”
Of course, soft cherries are not desirable as they have a shorter shelf life.
The new 45-foot-long machine will look at each cherry’s photos, sort off the defective ones and determine how to sort the rest by size and color, or a combination of the two. It takes 10 photos of each cherry and processes 30 cherries a second.
The new sorter will cut down the hands on workload, though it will not eliminate it. They will receive a second sorting just before they are packaged. This is beacuse the machine has an effective rate of 30-50%, so mistakes will need to be rectified.
When Herring first starter running the business he sold the cherries on the domestic market, but he quickly realised that export trad was what he needed to make a success of things.
“The dollar’s been weak and the overseas market pays better,” he said.
Distributors in the U.S. also like to guarantee their customers a certain volume of cherries because of the chain grocery store market. It’s a goal Herring’s working toward with a distributor for the 2012 season.
He predicts that the new sorted will double the amount of cherries he is able to process in an hour - from 5,000 to 10,000 pounds. However, “The goal wasn’t to increase production, but to increase quality,” Herring said.
Quality is king in the marketing group he sells his cherries through. The marketing group out of Canada sells cherries to buyers in Europe and Asia—England, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Russia, India, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Spme of these countries have strciter rules than the U.S. so the group strives for quality that meets the standards of all nations. The 12 participants pick their cherries in a similar way.
Cherries stay in the totes they were picked in until they are dumped into a water bath at the beginning of the processing line. Water then takes the cherries through each transition and phase of the line, softening the impact on the cherries. The processing line’s conveyors take the cherries through a hydro-cooler, which is essentially a huge tub of 33 degree water that brings the temperature of the cherries down.
The technology is five years old, so it’s not the first of it’s kind in the U.S., but it is the first of it’s kind in Montana.
Pat McGlynn, who’s worked on a number of grape and cherry projects around the valley as the Montana State University Agricultural Extension Agent sees the Herring’s new sorter as an added advantage to Flathead Lake’s cherry growers.
“I think he’s at the forefront of some really new things that are going on,” McGlynn said. “Cody’s processing plant is part of a bigger picture.” “It’s like a whole new breath of fresh air coming into an industry to help boost people up.”
Source: www.flatheadnewsgroup.com
Cherry trees run in lots around the Glacier Fresh processing and packaging plant, bare and dormant with the winter’s cold. Inside the plant, Cody and Dusti Herring are preparing for the 2012 harvest season and waiting for their new cherry sorter—a camera.
Their five-year-old processing line is broken into pieces. The old sizer, a series of rows made from metal rollers stacked on top of each other designed to drop smaller cherries to the lowest rows, will be replaced with a camera that takes photos of individual cherries as they go by on a chain conveyor.
“There’s no impact damage,” Cody Herring said. “It’s the compounding impacts that make them soft.”
Of course, soft cherries are not desirable as they have a shorter shelf life.
The new 45-foot-long machine will look at each cherry’s photos, sort off the defective ones and determine how to sort the rest by size and color, or a combination of the two. It takes 10 photos of each cherry and processes 30 cherries a second.
The new sorter will cut down the hands on workload, though it will not eliminate it. They will receive a second sorting just before they are packaged. This is beacuse the machine has an effective rate of 30-50%, so mistakes will need to be rectified.
When Herring first starter running the business he sold the cherries on the domestic market, but he quickly realised that export trad was what he needed to make a success of things.
“The dollar’s been weak and the overseas market pays better,” he said.
Distributors in the U.S. also like to guarantee their customers a certain volume of cherries because of the chain grocery store market. It’s a goal Herring’s working toward with a distributor for the 2012 season.
He predicts that the new sorted will double the amount of cherries he is able to process in an hour - from 5,000 to 10,000 pounds. However, “The goal wasn’t to increase production, but to increase quality,” Herring said.
Quality is king in the marketing group he sells his cherries through. The marketing group out of Canada sells cherries to buyers in Europe and Asia—England, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Russia, India, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Spme of these countries have strciter rules than the U.S. so the group strives for quality that meets the standards of all nations. The 12 participants pick their cherries in a similar way.
Cherries stay in the totes they were picked in until they are dumped into a water bath at the beginning of the processing line. Water then takes the cherries through each transition and phase of the line, softening the impact on the cherries. The processing line’s conveyors take the cherries through a hydro-cooler, which is essentially a huge tub of 33 degree water that brings the temperature of the cherries down.
The technology is five years old, so it’s not the first of it’s kind in the U.S., but it is the first of it’s kind in Montana.
Pat McGlynn, who’s worked on a number of grape and cherry projects around the valley as the Montana State University Agricultural Extension Agent sees the Herring’s new sorter as an added advantage to Flathead Lake’s cherry growers.
“I think he’s at the forefront of some really new things that are going on,” McGlynn said. “Cody’s processing plant is part of a bigger picture.” “It’s like a whole new breath of fresh air coming into an industry to help boost people up.”
Source: www.flatheadnewsgroup.com
Publication date: 2/17/2012
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