See TOMRA Food team at BP2021 this November

TOMRA Food, one of the leading manufacturers of sensor-based sorting equipment for the food industry, will demonstrate machines at BP2021, the potato industry event which will be held in the UK later this month.  

Participants of the 2-day biennial exhibition (Yorkshire Event Centre, Harrogate, November 24 - 25) will be able to see the TOMRA 3A optical sorter in effect on freshly harvested potatoes. See TOMRA in Hall 2, Booth 212.

The TOMRA 3A is usually set next to the entrance to a potato storage shed, where it cleans up freshly harvested potatoes after having passed through a mechanical grader and soil removal equipment. This machine is destined to work at high capacity, operating at a rate of up to 100 tons/hour. Thanks to its compactness, it can be easily moved from shed to shed. 

The TOMRA 3A is equipped with high-resolution cameras and near-infra-red (NIR) spectroscopy. These inspection technologies enable it to sort out the crop and foreign materials, identify potatoes of bad quality, and recognize good ones, even if they are coated in soil. Optical equipment is located in a sealed box, to withstand rain, dust, wind, and heat. Absence of moving parts allows to minimize maintenance requirements.

This machine removes 95 % of rocks, floating stones, dirt clods, corn cob, and 85% of other types of foreign materials. This means packers and processors can be sure of receiving high-quality product which contains few or no unwanted materials or unacceptable product.

Reduced dependence on manual labour is another plus of utilizing an optical sorter.

The TOMRA 3A can be synchronized with TOMRA Insight, the cloud-based data platform which is available as a subscription service. Thanks to the access to live data from sorting machines, operators can make improvements to line efficiencies. Accessing historical data enables it to quantify the standard of raw materials from suppliers and make smarter business decisions.

TOMRA 3A: user-experience   

Last year, Joe Button, a potato grower, owner and manager of Cornwall-based E.W. Button & Son, opened a new grading facility for the early season and ware tubers, and incorporated TOMRA’s sorter in a line of equipment from Haith, UK-based manufacturers of root vegetable and potato processing machinery.

First, potatoes go into a Haith Supa-Flow Bulker and then the dirty crop passes through a Haith Evolution Multi-Separator before being inspected by the TOMRA 3A. After the sorter has eliminated unwanted materials, including green potatoes, the accepted product passes a series of eight Haith Supa-Flow screen graders.

Button & Son has achieved improvements in product quality and yield, and a 35% rise in throughput speeds so investing in this machinery paid off.

Ken Hollingsworth, Haith’s UK sales team, commented that during over 20 years of trustful relationship with TOMRA, Haith has installed more than 100 TOMRA sorting machines. Haith recommended the TOMRA 3A to Joe Button because they knew how well it eliminates foreign materials and reduces dependency on labour.

Potato growers from the UK who would like to see the TOMRA 3A but who cannot visit BP2021 can see it at a grower’s facility. TOMRA Food can organize site visits to E.W. Button & Son in Cornwall or producers in Shropshire and Scotland.  

For more information about TOMRA Food, see the webpage