UNITEC's integrated technological sector at Macfrut 2023

UNITEC's technological solutions range from the field to the warehouse: these are innovative systems that directly help producers, such as the harvest trolley with automatic fruit sorting, but which also provide an answer to the different processing phases, where the different external and internal quality parameters of the fruits are classified in a non-destructive way, as well as in the packaging and palletization phases thanks to robotic anthropomorphic solutions. The sorting of fruit and vegetables therefore already begins in the fields with the harvest trolley which, thanks to the automatic sorting station, provides workers with real-time information on the organoleptic characteristics, in order to correctly pick the already suitable fruit.

 

Thanks to this UNITEC solution, it is possible to speed up operations in the fields, processing more than 20,000 fruits per hour, with advantages that are also reflected in the storage phase: in fact, the reduction of the share of the product to be selected saves storage and sorting costs, which represent on average about 5-6% of the total.

 

Guaranteeing fruit of constant quality is at the heart of UNITEC's projects: the company, in its Research & Development Center where more than 150 researchers work, develops technological solutions dedicated to each fruit, capable of classifying fruit and vegetable products on the basis of a multiplicity of independent parameters, evaluated individually and according to a plurality of different combinations depending on the objective of the analysis.

For example, thanks to the Blueberry Vision 3 system, with which the Unical 222 Berry grader

is equipped, fruit and vegetable centers are able to view the entire surface of each blueberry non-destructively, using sophisticated high-resolution cameras, in order to classify fruits according to external quality parameters - such as color and shape defects - in addition to optical size. The UNIQ Blueberry System completes the blueberry quality classification phase package, safeguarding the integrity of each fruit.

 

By integrating automated technological solutions also for the packaging phase, UNITEC allows the evolution of the entire process inside the warehouse. With UNI FLOW GENTLE PACKER, operators are able to maximize the efficiency and potential of automatic apple packing, thanks to the continuous and gentle movement of fruit inside the cells. For operators in the date sector, on the other hand, there is the UNI INTELLIGENT PACK DATES robotic solution, capable of positioning the dates inside the trays so that they are oriented in the same direction, in order to better organize the space inside the package.

 

Many are the solutions presented by the Group during this edition of Macfrut, where UNITEC, with its 100 years of history, provides its "technological sector", from harvesting in the field to robotics, to provide answers to the need to improve processing processes in fruit and vegetable processing plants around the world.