Just five years after its creation, Logofruits has become the largest blueberry producer in Portugal and one of the largest in Europe. Logofruits grows and packages fruit for well-known supermarket chains in northern Europe and Spain. It also offers packaging services for wholesalers in South America and South Africa. The company continues to grow: for its sixth season, in 2024, production at its packaging factory near Alcácer will increase from one shift per day to two shifts a day.
Logofruits' rapid success was made possible thanks to the vision and rigorous standards of Lourenço De Botton, the company's founder and managing partner. Lourenço started the business cautiously, with a modest 15 hectares. After studying the challenges and opportunities of the blueberry industry and visiting other blueberry packing companies, he made two important decisions.
On the one hand, to invest in TOMRA Food's packaging line equipment so that the packaging of fruit for export could be done in-house rather than being delegated to a third party. In preparation for the 2023 season, the company installed state-of-the-art line solutions at its Alcácer plant in November 2022: TOMRA's KATO260 precision sorting system with LUCAi artificial intelligence and two TOMRA CURO filling systems.
The other decision was made possible thanks to the first: adding a new source of income by also using the equipment of the TOMRA line to sort and package blueberries for South American companies (from Chile and Peru) and South -Africans who wanted to sell in Europe.
"We expect demand will continue increasing in the coming years, but we also expect things will become harder for small producers. This will be an increasingly industrial-scale segment and cost control will be more important than it already is. This means that technology is one of the most important factors for our company, not only in the field but also in our packaging facilities. Before investing in equipment, we carried out a thorough evaluation of the market and the different technical solutions available. This research showed that the combination of Logofruits and TOMRA fit us like a glove,” Lourenço stated.
When asked to what extent TOMRA's line solutions have subsequently proven to be useful, he responds without hesitation: “They are revolutionary."
Source: tomra.com
