Attie van Zyl, Two-a-Day's managing director, says the new line will allow them to pack to 44 different detailed specifications from a single grower's fruit at a speed of eight pieces of fruit per second.
"The technology not only allows us to sort by weight, but also permits very detailed visual sorting to colour, diameter and blemish standards which translates into fewer returns of fruit that don't meet stringent specs," he says, adding that they also expect to be able to increase capacity by 20% per hour, moving fruit through the system more quickly and further improving our quality offering.
"Based on trees in the ground at the moment we will have to be able to manage more than 50% more fruit in the next eight to ten years. This investment, the first tranche in a R600m ten-year plan of new packing and storage facilities marks the start of our capacity extension programme," he says.
The Greefa line can sort apples from as tiny as 40mm up to a hefty 120mm with weights from as slight as 20g to 1kg. Two-a-Day's skilled packers are already familiar with similar lines so no learning curve is expected.
Van Zyl says that the sorting line can assess cosmetic defects without harming the fruit in any way. "A high resolution CCD infrared camera determines fruit size while each piece of fruit is measured several times producing an extremely accurate result, a vast improvement on the previous generation sorters. Internal fruit quality such as brix (sugar) value and physiological defects such as water core and internal browning can be pinpointed without difficulty in future when the need arises.
Roelf Pienaar, managing director of Tru-Cape Fruit Marketing, the company that markets fruit from Two-a-Day, Ceres Fruit Growers and others, says that as good quality is central to Tru-Cape's brand promise, and the reason customers demand Tru-Cape by name and may be happy to pay a premium for it, the new packing line will mean fewer quality issues.
"While Tru-Cape is developing systems and new markets to accommodate the expected 50% more fruit in the next years, more than seven million cartons than we currently manage, knowing that the fruit is packed to extremely rigorous standards means we can continue to build on our brand promise knowing we are supported by our growers and packers," he says.
Two-a-Day has also invested in new storage facilities. "Our new dynamic atmosphere storage facility will allow us to store fruit optimally for longer periods and also to store pears, such as Packham Triumph, for enjoyment later in the year. Basically, it uses light sensors to dynamically control the atmosphere and maintain fruit at its lowest respiration rate.
The fluorescence interactive response monitor tests the amount of light from the fruit's peel which allows us to determine the anaerobic compensation point, essential in knowing where the fruit is in its ripening cycle, and how to adjust the amount of oxygen in the room for optimal storage," Van Zyl concludes.
