Turkish citrus grower doubles capacity with optical sorting technology

Özler Tarım is a Turkish citrus grower with international recognition for its vertically integrated production processes. The company's facilities in Adana not only handle the citrus fruit grown on its 550-hectare land, but also sort, grade, and pack the fruit from other large contract growers.

In 2021, Özler Tarım purchased an eight-lane TOMRA 5S Advanced optical sorting machine in order to increase export volumes. After being impressed with the investment, the company immediately ordered a second grader, doubling its capacity. The new grader has the Spectrim C2IR optical vision system and Inspectra² internal grading module. Before these investments, the company relied on manual work for quality selection and a mechanical system for grading, which limited its capacity.

Özbek Özler, the company's General Manager, said that after investing in TOMRA's technologies, Özler Tarım, doubled its capacity in just one year.

Although 70% of Turkish citrus exports go to the Middle East, Ukraine, and Russia, only 1% of Özler Tarım's exports go to these regions. 50% of its exports go to Europe, 30% to Japan, 10% to America and Canada, and 10% to other countries. Instead of competing on price with local companies in Turkey, Özler Tarım is competing on quality and service with international suppliers in the global market. Özbek Özler said that the company has been able to meet the challenging expectations of these regions by strengthening its technology infrastructure.

The company’s machines are ideal for sorting defects such as scarring, insect damage, clipper, and other damage that may occur during harvesting. By having automated control over the fruit's quality, size, and taste, the company can compete with the largest manufacturers in the world. As a result, they do not receive any complaints from customers about product problems, and product rejections have decreased to just one in a thousand.

Reflecting on Özler Tarım's remarkable achievements, Özbek Özler said that in the last five years, their exports to existing customers have increased by 50%, and they have rapidly increased their market share by entering many new markets. Following their new machinery investments, they aim to increase exports to more than 100,000 tons, with a targeted growth of 50% in the next three years.