Turkish company acquires TOMRA 3C optical sorting machine to increase product quality and reduce food waste

Bademcioğlu Gıda is a Turkish business based in Gaziantep. Every year, Bademcioğlu processes more than 3.000 tons of almonds for the domestic market. 80 % of these almonds are produced in Turkey and the remaining 20 % are imported. 

In order to optimize its almond processing operations, Bademcioğlu Gıda selected the new TOMRA 3C optical sorting machine, which is a perfect solution to increase product quality and productivity due to reducing food waste by detecting defects in products and sorting out by-products.

Yakup Ali Kaplan, General Manager, says that Turkey relies on imports for almonds, but the situation is changing with the rising number of producers and rising amount of high-quality output there: 

“With the right investments, we believe we’ll be able to satisfy the domestic market demand in the next ten years. This is why technology investments  are  crucial.  We need to avoid possible labor-related issues and to minimize product waste by utilizing optical sorters".

Bademcioğlu Gıda visited almost 20 facilities in Spain, the world’s second-top almond processor after the USA, before buying the TOMRA 3C. 

According to Yakup Ali Kaplan,  in these facilities they observed the TOMRA optical sorter machines and witnessed how impressive the results are. By reducing false sorting rates, and by enabling precise product-grading, optical sorters optimize yields and improve product quality.

Ahmet Koçyiğit, Sales Manager for TOMRA Food Turkey, said that the TOMRA 3C will allow Bademcioğlu to better product yields by removing foreign materials which are comparable in structure and size to the good product defects that mechanical pre-cleaners are not able to remove. Detecting by- products and quality defects in the waste will also prevent food waste and commercial losses. 

Due to the unrivalled multiple spectral cameras and laser technologies, TOMRA 3C carries out sorting tasks with the highest capacity and success rates, which previously were not possible with channel sorters. This unique combination helps to detect product defects even when defects are the same in structure and color to good products. The TOMRA 3C can be also offered with color cameras only for cost- effective high performance in simpler sorting tasks.

As Yakup Ali Kaplan says, the TOMRA 3C helps ensure hygiene in food processing. Unfortunately, manual sorting can lead to quality losses due to the impossibility to determine defects invisible to the human eye, and can also lead to product waste through false rejects.

Advanced optical sorting technologies are capable of eliminating both problems. Moreover, hygiene risk exists when there is contact with employees during the manual product processing, even when such contact is kept to a minimum, and even with more caution being exercised during the pandemic. Nevertheless, by sorting with machinery, this risk is put to a minimum.

TOMRA 3C is perfectly designed for nut processing and is also highly effective for sorting of seeds, beans, grains, and pulses.

For more information about TOMRA, visit their website.