The 2023 edition of Macfrut saw Unitec involved as a technical partner of the International Blueberry Days event. By supporting this event the group wants to emphasize the importance of technological innovation in fostering the growth of the blueberry market worldwide, as demonstrated by the results achieved by Unitec technologies so far.
Unitec motorised harvesting platform
This is a market that needs accurate selection of fruit quality, to ensure that they can be shipped over long distances while maintaining suitable characteristics in order to market them in fresh condition at their destination. .
There were many solutions presented by the Group at this year’s edition of Macfrut, held from 3-5 May, 2023. Unitec, with it’s 100-year history, offers a complete “technological chain” to address the needs of packing houses worldwide in order to improve processes, from harvesting in the field to robotics.
Based in Lugo (RA), the company develops patented innovations for sorting more than 50 types of fruit, applying the skills acquired across different segments of the supply chain, with an international reach. Unitec technological solutions have a place in the field as well as in the warehouse: systems that directly assist producers, such as the motorized harvesting platform with automatic fruit sorting, that respond to the needs of at the different phases of the process, where they select external and internal fruit quality parameters non-destructively, as well as packing and palletizing stages using robotic anthropomorphic solutions.
Fruit and vegetable sorting starts from the field with the motorized harvesting platform, which provides real-time information on organoleptic characteristics to the workers in order to correctly harvest the produce that are already suitable. Due to this Unitec solution operations in the field can be accelerated, processing over 20,000 fruits per hour, with benefits also reflected in the storage phase. Since the number of products to be sorted is lower, storage and sorting costs can be reduced by approximately 5 to 6%.
Unitec projects focus on ensuring that fruits are of consistent quality. The company - in its Research & Development Center, with more than 150 researchers - develops technological solutions dedicated to each fruit enabling selection of fruit and vegetable products based on a variety of independent parameters, evaluated individually and in a wide range of combinations based on the analysis objective.
For example, the Blueberry Vision 3 system integrated in the Unical 222 Berry sorter, allows packing houses to non-destructively inspect the entire surface of each blueberry thanks to sophisticated high-resolution cameras. Through this system, it is possible to select fruits based on external quality parameters, such as colour and shape defects, in addition to optical size. The UNIQ Blueberry system - a highly reliable solution for the selection of internal quality - completes the package of the blueberry quality selection stage, safeguarding the integrity of each individual fruit.
For more information:
Unitec S.p.A.
Tel. +39 0545 288884
www.unitec-group.com