UNITEC innovation at the service of packing houses worldwide

Last month, Fructidor visited the trade show Fruit Attraction in Madrid, Spain, and had a conversation with Mr. Nour Abdrabbo, Global Sales Director for UNITEC, the sorting technology visionary and expert, who kindly commented on the ongoing processes within the company and the industry in general. 

Fructidor: “What are your impressions from this year’s Fruit Attraction edition?”

Nour Abdrabbo: “What we have seen is that the fruit and veg industry works thanks to connections. In 2020 and 2021 we had restrictions, limitations of face-to-face meetings, and it was quite difficult. Handling this through screens was difficult. Our sector is moved with desire for connection and meetings, speaking, seeing the eyes and understanding the real necessities. And here today, I had a feeling of a good day.”

Fructidor: “According to your observations, which are the main trends of today’s agriculture business?”

Nour Abdrabbo: “The main trend that we observed this year at Fruit Attraction is the sincere desire for automation and efficiency not only in words but to be proven in numbers. Nowadays the industry is more open to evaluate either at farms or at packing houses. As we already know there is a shortage in hand labour in the agriculture industry, the new generation doesn’t have the same enthusiasm and passion to work in agriculture like older generations which is quite understandable as there are other simple and comfortable ways to earn a living, consequently, there is a serious problem with sourcing the manpower. Our vision has always been, remains, and will be open to innovation, and this is what really differentiates us from others. Our capability to listen and welcome new ideas, the main focus now is on automation and efficiency, as a concrete answer to nowadays lack of specialized labour."

Fructidor: “And this trend, does it mean that big companies will remain in the game, and small businesses will disappear?”

Nour Abdrabbo: “It's a good and quite logical question. To reach high level of automation we need volumes and standardization. More likely it will lead to new alliances of small and medium size companies.”

Fructidor: “Here at Fruit Attraction, what kind of solutions do you present?”

Nour Abdrabbo: “As a result of our connectivity with the industry, this year we brought to the exhibition three different technologies: UNICAL 10.0 equipped with Avocados Sort and UNIQ Avocados which is a unique technology dedicated to the processing of Avocados, giving the avocado packers a delicate and efficient technical solution to fulfill the different demands of the consumers in different parts of the world; Chestnut Vision, which is giving a concrete and effective solution to the difficulties that the chestnut industry is facing during the last year; UNI INTELLIGENT PUNNET PACK, one of the results of our robotic division. Last year we launched a new division (UNI Robotics), with the objective to enhance the productivity and the efficiency inside the Agriculture industry, especially the packing houses, where we are introducing innovative solutions to replace the repetitive activities by Robots. With our knowhow and highly specialized team, we are completely enthusiastic to find together with our customers innovative solutions to help them be more efficient and productive.”

Fructidor: “What kind of capacity one needs to use Unitec’s machine? How versatile is it?”

Nour Abdrabbo: “It depends on the type of fruits or vegetables to be processed; we are working with around 50 kinds of fruits and vegetables, each product has its own characteristics and way of handling, together with our specialized team we can find the most suitable technical solution for each necessity of capacity. Our Solutions are custom-made and are born to give concrete answers to the needs, goals, and, why not, the dreams of every single packing house.

Fructidor: “Is it reasonable to have one lane? How many tons is it capable of processing?”

Nour Abdrabbo: “For sure, yes, we have plenty of successful projects with one lane sorter running in different parts of the world working with different kinds of product. Regarding the capacity in terms of Kg/hour/lane it depends on the velocity of the sorter and medium weight of the workable product. What I want to highlight here is that our projects are always born with the desire to be paid back with the results generated, during the development of the project we are working side by side with our customers guiding them to the most efficient and profitable technical solution. 

Fructidor: “Do you have any customers in Africa?”

Nour Abdrabbo: “Yes we have, especially in North Africa and South Africa, we have a company branch in South Africa that was born with the objective to be near to the industry, to be connected to people who are working there, we have there many installations for citrus, tomatoes, apples, stone fruits, cherries, blueberries."

Fructidor: “Are you interested in having partnerships in Kenya?”

Nour Abdrabbo: “The agriculture industry in Kenya is growing especially in the avocados; we are very interested to help the avocado industry with our technologies, we are open to discuss and evaluate a sort of cooperation with local distributors that would share our vision and values in order to offer the industry the best technologies supported by the best service. Today, we have 20 operational branches worldwide, and we are working in 65 countries.

If with our innovation and with our solutions we can help we are happy to do it, everywhere in the world."