If we had to pick just one watershed moment in the history of humankind, we’d say it’s agriculture. The ability to grow food in sufficient quantities to sustain the population was a profound moment.
Today, we are at another such point.
As BCG calls it, the future of food is automation. Yes, we may not have reached a point where fully automated indoor farms are possible. Or meat 2.0 is growing in labs.
But one thing is for sure: we have reached a stage where we can use automated technology to better sort and utilize the fruits and vegetables we grow.
With that, we introduce you to Intello FruitSort – an automatic soft fruit sorting machine proudly made in India.
Most fruits, like apples, oranges, and pomegranates, are fragile. Handle them too much, and they get damaged, enough to go beyond the acceptable quality parameters. Yet, it’s essential to sort, grade, and pack them, which requires manual handling.
It’s sort of a vicious cycle.
Vegetable and fruit sorting machines help, but only to an extent. These machines are not built to avoid collisions between fresh produce. For something like an onion, it’s not an issue. But for fruit like apples, it is.
The softshell can only take so many punches before it loses its essential freshness and appeal. So, we designed Intello FruitSort to specifically solve this function.
Intello FruitSort transports each delicate fruit in a pre-molded soft cup, completely avoiding any damage. Moreover, it uses a single-line arrangement to prevent collisions.
While each fruit moves down the belt, a double-sensor weighing system sorts them based on weight. At the same time, an extremely sophisticated system of lighting and computer vision cameras scans the entire surface of the fruit to measure color, size, and external defects.
The fruit sorting machine is configurable. So, you can adjust the quality and defect criteria to match your parameters and save them for future sorting.
Sorting possibilities with Intello FruitSort |
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Softshell fruit friendly |
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Lines extendable to 6 |
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Supports 14 grades with 7 sizes and 2 color categories |
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Increased capacity: 2 to 3.5 tons/hour/line depending on fruit |
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Remote technical support with IoT system |
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Automatic tray handling, wet infeed, brushing, waxing, and air-based drying |
The great advantage of automating sorting is not that you eliminate repetitive and fatiguing manual tasks. It is that sorting becomes accurate - 4 times more than manual sorting - since the machine can catch defects like rotten spots, bruises, and more that are not visible to the naked eye.
Simultaneously, you speed up fruit sorting by an eye-popping 40 times! If you use a 4-line Intello FruitSort, you get 6 to 8 tons of output each hour.
Manual sorting is unavoidably subjective and vulnerable to errors because the human mind gets tired. Automated sorting machines work unflaggingly hour after hour. They do so with superior accuracy and consistent efficiency.
What’s more? The automatic fruit sorting machine has proven to cut sorting costs by up to 90%. Why? Because it’s objective and precise (think: less false rejects), it’s automated (think: less labor), it’s faster and runs continuously (think: less downtime, more output).
Most importantly, because it reduces the number of incorrectly sorted fruits, you comply with quality specifications. Every time.
It’s an excellent solution to optimize your sorting throughput if you run a multiple-fruit setup, simply have a small space to squeeze in a machine, or have a challenging layout. FruitSort asks for minimal maintenance because we use quality components with solid design. Since it’s made in India, resolving service issues is easy.
Each year, we waste over $1 trillion worth of food. The biggest chunk of this loss occurs at the harvesting stage of fruits and vegetables. It's figures like these that make embracing technology imperative in fresh produce.
Adopting automated machines like a fruit sorter (or a digital AI solution) can empower food businesses to stop needless waste while directly benefiting their bottom line.
But don’t take our word for it. Get in touch and watch Intello FruitSort in action – an investment that pays you back by capturing markets that demand consistent and higher fruit quality standards.