Grading solution for fruit and veg of all shapes and sizes

Grading fruit and vegetables for size and appearance is becoming increasingly important in today’s domestic and export markets. Solutions often require significant investment and can be unsuitable for delicate fruits and odd shapes, or don’t match the smaller scale required for particular crops or varieties.

Auspouch has worked with Zetapack of Italy to address these concerns and deliver practical and straightforward graders suited to a wide variety of Australian and New Zealand produce.

Specific varieties that are suitable include: nashi pears, Golden Delicious apples, apricots, persimmons, peaches and nectarines. Vegetable varieties include tomatoes (including truss varieties), capsicums and zucchini.

Produce can be graded by weight, size and colour, ensuring customer specifications for each batch and pack format can be met.

The Zetapack approach is to use machine-based grading and human operators in partnership, which results in accurate sorting of the fruit while maintaining the soft handling that a human operator can provide. By eliminating the human decision process, accuracy and efficiency can be improved across full packing shifts.

The system uses a method of electronically grading each piece and assigning it to individual operators. Each operator is alerted to their designated fruit or vegetable using a moving LED bar at each workstation. If a fruit or vegetable is unpicked, it merely moves around another time to be picked, reducing waste.

The equipment measures the number of pieces of each grade picked throughout each session, giving managers an accurate record of pack-out statistics and packing efficiency.

The Zetapack graders are suitable for:

• soft, ripe and delicate fruits;
• oddly shaped fruits and vegetables;
• bunches and tresses; and
• hard fruits at lower production volumes — where it’s not feasible to use or change over a high-tonnage grader.

The graders are designed to be efficient at production rates down to 1–2 tonnes per hour, which makes them suitable for niche varieties and smaller packing sheds. The graders are compact and only require a small footprint in a packing shed.

With a plug and play design, the system can be installed quickly and easily using local resources. It is simple to maintain with no reliance on overseas technicians for installation.