Ambrosia Citrus Estate produces blueberries, lemons, grapefruits and oranges on its farm located in Hoedspruit, in South Africa's Limpopo province. It dedicates 75 hectares to growing six varieties of blueberries, which it also processes and packs. The company serves the domestic market and exports to countries in the Middle East, the European Union and the United Kingdom – all of which have specific requirements and demand consistently high quality and food safety standards.
When it first started blueberry production, Ambrosia Citrus Estate graded the fruit by hand. "This was a huge challenge, with all the human errors that come with it," says Gert Bezuidenhout, Managing Director. After two years, the farm purchased its first Tomra turnkey line, and it was a turning point: "The first year, we packed over a thousand tons. Without this technology, we wouldn't be able to handle such a volume at all, and some of our crop would have gone to waste."
Since introducing its first Tomra machine, they have considerably expanded their packing operation to meet the growing demand for its blueberries. In 2021, it opened a new packhouse, which extends over 2500 square meters and houses its integrated Tomra packing solution featuring two KATO 260 sorting and grading systems, and four CURO filling systems. Today, in a typical year, they process over 1200 tons during the season, which begins in May and finishes in November.
Precision grading with KATO 260 and LUCAi
"We've seen a massive return on investment with KATO, and our overseas quality reports have improved drastically," says Coenie Scheepers, Operations Manager. "Previously, we had to rely on the picker to give us feedback on the softness of the fruit. Now our pack-out has improved a lot because we rely on a machine that grades out the quality; it's not based on the personal preference of a picker that takes out the fruit. It definitely has provided us with new opportunities. We can now select quality and size preferences for a specific market and deliver that specific product for that customer."
The KATO 260 systems at Ambrosia Citrus Estate also feature TOMRA's LUCAi artificial intelligence package, which classifies and grades fruit with unprecedented accuracy. Each piece of fruit is photographed by multiple cameras and LUCAi instructs how each individual blueberry is to be classified. Ignatius Steenkamp, Packhouse Manager, is impressed: "With the LUCAi technology and software, we are able to adapt to every variety and sort out the defects so that we can give the customer a good product."
High-speed filling with the CURO filling system
The four CURO filling systems integrated in TOMRA's sorting solution enable Ambrosia Citrus Estate to handle the large quantities processed by their KATO 260s while ensuring consistently high accuracy.
For more information:
Michelle Haynes
Tomra Food
Tel: +64 21 377 141
Email: [email protected]
www.tomra.com/food