Three announcements from TOMRA Food

Spain

Wednesday 12 October 2022

Photo: Alejandro Palacios Valencia, Area Sales Manager Spain & Portugal for TOMRA Processed Food and Roberto Ricci, Global Category Director for Tomatoes at TOMRA Food at Fruit Attraction in Madrid, Spain, 2022.

Last week, at Fruit Attraction in Madrid, Spain, TOMRA Food made several important announcements.

In the interview with Fructidor, Roberto Ricci, Global Category Director for Tomatoes at TOMRA Food, revealed: ”At Fruit Attraction we want to emphasize our partnership with ICOEL, an Italian company and already a partner of TOMRA for 20 years. Until now, ICOEL has been our supplier in certain countries, and also our exclusive dealer for Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Next, ICOEL will be our exclusive partner for our cherry solutions worldwide, excluding North America. Together we will provide an integrated grading solution for cherries. In addition to this, we will progressively discuss how we will develop our relationship in other parts of the world. Together with ICOEL we are increasing our strength.”

Ricci also explained that TOMRA Food’s grading line is a modular installation and, through the partnership with ICOEL, it is able to deliver high-quality sorting technology to customers. “We mainly manufacture the Invision system, the sensor-based machine that detects and classifies the fruit according to its characteristics. ICOEL completes the line with other equipment, including the packaging and palletizing, and integrates the solution in one complete line. One of the improvements ICOEL has made recently is the completely automatic filling of boxes. ICOEL historically worked with other types of fruits, but in 2015 it started the development of equipment and solution for cherries. Now, after seven years of TOMRA’s cooperation with ICOEL in cherries, we are one of the global market leaders.”

On the Processed side of the business, Alejandro Palacios Valencia, Area Sales Manager Spain & Portugal

for TOMRA Processed Food, commented: “At this exhibition, TOMRA is promoting three different platforms: the TOMRA 5A sorting machine for potatoes and carrots; the TOMRA 5C for vegetables, with Biometric Signature Identification technology (BSI+) capable of detecting the chemical composition of the fruit and vegetables as well as hard-to-detect defects; lastly, the TOMRA 5X, the technology which is especially important for Spain as a large olive producer.”

“In the past, the olive industry in Spain had a problem differentiating olives with pits inside from olives stuffed with other food ingredients. X-ray technology couldn’t distinguish an olive with anchovies, peppers, or cheese inside from an olive with a pit. This problem was solved at the start of this year with the new TOMRA 5X, which uses AI for sorting.”, continued Palacios.

“Also here at Fruit Attraction, we are showcasing the TOMRA Insight data platform. It enables users to connect all the TOMRA Food machines and provides live data and statistics about their performance, as well as compiling historic data into a report. This means customers can know the machines’ capacity, what kind of defects they have on the line, or if there is any problem with the machine. All this data now can be used for quality, maintenance or operation departments, improving line efficiencies in real-time and informing business decisions. This is a big revolution in sorting technology.”, concluded the manager.

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