Vicente Jiménez Blanes: "Installing 2 Nimbus BSI+ machines was the best thing we've ever done in 57 years of the company's history"

Legumbres Selectas Sierra Nevada is one of the top 5 companies of European market, specialized in processing beans, lentils and own production chickpeas, based in Granada, Spain.

The family business with a 57-years background produces most selected pulses in Spain. 

It was established by Antonio Jiménez Martín, father of Vicente Jiménez Blanes, the company's current CEO. 

The company owns around 5.000 hectares with chickpeas in Andalusia, with an annual production rotating from 5.000 and 7.000 tons.

They possess 2 chickpea varieties: Sierra Nevada White Chickpeas (30 percent of their chickpea production) and Sierra Nevada Pedrosillano, a variety intended to deliver bigger yields, resistant to diseases. 

They supply the most demanding canneries, packers and pulses producers of Spain, Italy, France, Holland and Belgium, as well as hummus, falafel and flour producers in Spain, Northern Europe, Algeria, Pakistan, Tunisia and Turkey. 

The company has seen the solution to the problems related to grading pulses in the Nimbus BSI+ by TOMRA. 

This tool has improved food safety and quality, a 10-fold raise in its production volume, and a much more automated, efficient and controlled process for staff. 

Vicente Jiménez said that when he saw the Nimbus BSI+ in operation for the very first time, he knew it was exceptional, but he never could imagine what it was capable of. The results were astonishing: 99.9 percent purity of the product, and they have gone from processing 500 kg / h to a total installed capacity of 5.000 kg / h.

As a supplier to the most important companies like Litoral (by Nestlé), they needed to solve issues that mechanical sorting was not capable to overcome: the presence of stones, wood, glass, ceramic; the removal of cross-contamination by vegetable seeds or other varieties of chickpea; the capacity to discard wrinkled and malformed chickpea grains that doesn’t match standards of a premium product. 

The technical department of TOMRA recommended the Nimbus BSI+, which is a high-performance sorting machine that is unique due to its accuracy in removing unwanted components. 

After testing the sorter, Vicente Jiménez confessed that installing 2 Nimbus BSI+ machines was the best thing he’s ever done in 57 years of the company's history. 

Antonio Jiménez Martín added that he has never imagined that it would be possible to process their chickpea with such high quality, purity, processing capacities and speeds.

According to Alejandro Palacios (TOMRA’s Area Sales Manager for Spain and Portugal), the X-ray technology which is only capable of selecting stones, metals, glass and ceramics, didn’t respond to their demand. 

When Vicente Jiménez saw the possibilities of Nimbus BSI+, he saw the potential benefits for the company. 

The 2 machines had front cameras (BSI+ technology) and back lasers with different colors: one with infrared and green and the second one with infrared and blue.

Legumbres Selectas Sierra Nevada has raised their client portfolio and now they have the most advanced equipment in the sector in Europe.

The BSI+ technology helped them to increase production and offer food safety and the best quality on the market.

Now the company is pursuing another important objective: to introduce a food safety system (SGCA / GFSI) according to the IFS Version 7 Quality Standards, providing transparency throughout the supply chain. 

Vicente Jiménez stated that now with the Nimbus BSI+, they can acquire this certification, which is the key to their international expansion.

The Nimbus BSI+ is able to detect the biometric features of objects and then remove foreign bodies of different types. The process starts with the chickpeas which just arrived from the field. Then they undergo a cleaning which is followed by mechanical sorting with different machines and manual inspection.

The only flaw is that this pulse’s color and thickness can be the same as stone’s or other foreign bodies, making it complicated to remove them from the product. 

After preparatory cleaning and mechanical sorting, the chickpeas go through the Nimbus BSI+ sorters, providing a 99.9 percent purity, and potent metal detectors. 

Afterwards only the last visual inspection is needed, so the inspection team is reduced to 4 people. The company has achieved an extremely accurate and fine-tuned sorting which cannot be reached with the human eye.

To learn more about TOMRA go to the link.