"A freshly peeled pineapple within 20 seconds"

BM Boxmeer and engineering company TCPM began development of Piñabar, an automatic pineapple peeler, in October 2011. Pierre van de Braak, one of the inventors of the Piñabar, talked enthusiastically over the machine. "We developed the Piñabar with five engineers and also hold the patent. This revolutionary machine removes the peel, cuts the top off and takes the core out, all within 20 seconds."'

Conversations first took place at the end of 2011. "The Coop supermarket chain approached us. There was a type of machine, the Pine-o-matic, but it was not that good as it required a lot of maintenance and it was not easy to keep clean. The machine also did not fit in with the shopping experience of the customer. So, the question was whether we could come up with an improved pineapple machine. We teamed up with TCPM to find out," explained Pierre. 

The first machine was placed in a Coop supermarket in Velp in May 2012. "This was a prototype to get an idea if the machine could function well practically and fulfil the wishes of the customer. Since then we have placed eight machines in different Coop and PLUS supermarkets. We tailor the machines to the client. Along with supermarkets we also target other customers. Our goal is to place 500 Piñabars within three to five years. We are looking into promoting the machine to a wider audience and have had our first talks with pineapple importers. The possibilities are there for future collaboration. Our plan is to cover the whole of Europe!" 

"At the moment the pineapple comes out of the machine in one piece, but we are looking into developing this further. It will shortly be possible to also cut it into wedges or sticks. Customers are very enthusiastic. They think it is great so watch it all happening and that they can choose which pineapple goes into the machine. Of course the fact that everything is so much fresher is also important. The Piñabar is suitable for different varieties of pineapple but the standard size is 6 to 8. Customers can customize the knife to the dimensions of the pineapple. The prepared pineapple is placed in a plastic bucket provided by Bunzl, however we are investigating which packaging is the most practical since plastic is not very good for the environment, so we may change this in the future."

Pierre explained how the Piñabar does not take up too much space. "The unique part of this system is that the pineapple is turned during processing, so the machine can be built quite compactly, which is an important consideration for supermarkets where machines cannot take up too much floor space. The machine measurements are 0.8 x 0.8 x 1.6 meter."