Italian carrot supplier reports on successful implementation of TOMRA sorters

PEF Srl is a carrot industry expert whose history dates back to 1980. The Italian company owned by the Peviani and the Pavan families today represents the entire supply chain, from sowing to retail sales. Aiming to better cope with the peaking production season in Sicily, PEF installed two TOMRA sorting machines that enabled precise and defect-free sorting. The sorters are linked to the TOMRA Insight digital platform, which helps monitor workflows and yields for better performance.

The company has one plant in Chioggia (Veneto) and another one in Ispica (Sicily). Massimo Pavan is the Director of PEF and of the IGP Ispica Carrot Consortium.

The annual volume that both plants process is about 25.000 tons which covers the market all year round. 

The Venetian plant operates for the agro-industry 12 months a year. The summer activities are particularly dedicated to exports. Half of its fresh carrot production is exported to Germany, Sweden, France, Denmark, Norway, and Eastern Europe.

Extreme volumes? TOMRA has it sorted

The plant in Sicily operates at full capacity from February to June. To cope with this peak, it has installed two TOMRA carrot sorters.

Massimo Pavan proudly stresses that PEF is one of the first in Italy in this business. They also have two farms since carrot harvesting and production are mechanized, and they have to manage them with synergy. Moreover, since the large-scale retail trade demanded greater control over production in the 2000s, from sowing to packaging, PEF farms ensure controlled products throughout the entire supply chain.

According to Mr. Pavan, they needed a fast machine that could effectively remove waste. After the installation of the two new TOMRAs, the sorting quality is consistent and improved. The new sorters enabled the company to reduce by half the number of employees dedicated to manual control. 

Dario Cotena, Area Sales Manager at TOMRA Processed Food Italy, commented that Mr. Pavan has known their sorting machines before and contacted them directly. They visited together a client in Germany who worked with the same type of product, so that he could witness the machine at work. He added that the customer needed to boost production to over 10 tons per hour of product per line (on 2 lines, for a total of over 20 tons per hour) while decreasing processing times, standardizing quality, eliminating foreign bodies, and minimizing manual sorting.

The machine has been installed at the plant to sort 2 types of waste. The first type is forked carrots or small pieces, destined to animals, and the second type is destined to the agri-food industry, as an ingredient for purée, minestrone, and carrot-based products. Pavan emphasized that this double selection turned out to be crucial for PEF because the quality of the second choice has significantly risen compared to manual selection.

Extra edge of the TOMRA Insight platform 

The key complement to the new sorting machines is the TOMRA Insight platform, which provides access to processing data to effectively organize workflow and control the product quality via any connected fixed or mobile device.

According to Mr. Pavan, the platform gives them better understanding of what the machine is processing and tells them how many tons have been already processed. During the installation, TOMRA's digital team came in to explain to them the use of the platform and gave me suggestions for the next season to improve production and the performance of the machine. Minimization of manual work and digitalization in the fruit and veg industry is crucial, concluded Massimo Pavan.