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UNITEC continues to innovate with a new solution for the stone fruit industry
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Wednesday 30 August 2023
FJ | Unitec S.p.a.
UNITEC has designed and developed a new and innovative solution to meet the requirements of Sun Valley Packing, one of the leading producers, packers and distributors of stone fruit (peaches, nectarines and plums) based in Reedley, California.
The UNITEC Group has been in business for 100 years and innovation continues unabated. The Research & Development team has designed and developed a new and innovative solution to meet the requirements of Sun Valley Packing, a leading producer, packer and distributor of stone fruit (peaches, nectarines, plums) based in Reedley, California.
"UNITEC came with a new idea for the stone fruit handling process. They didn't come here to propose a new sorter or a new technology. They came with the idea of a new solution, unheard of in the stone fruit industry," says Sergio Chavez, COO of Sun Valley Packing.
The Unical 600 8-lane sorter, equipped with Peach Vision 3 quality selection technology, processes more than 200,000 pieces of fruit per hour. Thanks to the innovative Peach Vision 3 external quality selection system, Sun Valley Packing can now detect and eliminate fruit with defects such as soft damage, apical damage, skin damage, etc., as well as sorting by weight, optical size and colour, with the aim of selecting them according to homogeneous criteria.
The project also includes 4 packaging lines, dedicated to different types of packaging (trays, boxes, bags, clamshells) with a particular focus on packaging trays of different sizes, especially the 'mass market' size, which is increasingly in demand by US retailers.
This solution, developed by UNITEC, is designed to facilitate the filling of trays, enabling operators to work in a more ergonomic position compared with traditional methods, with a substantial increase in productivity.
The line is then equipped with an automatic palletising system, capable of automatically picking up and stacking entire layers of cartons, allowing great flexibility, and with UNISTRAP technology for automatic fitting of corner protectors and pallet strapping.
The Traceability System, entirely developed by UNITEC, completes the line and allows Sun Valley Packing to track the product from the time the boxes are emptied to the time they are palletised, reducing the manpower and time required for batch change operations, while monitoring production in real time and automatically communicating the results of each batch with the customer's ERP system.
Such innovative systems with high levels of automation from UNITEC, which include the anthropomorphic robot for handling empty cartons, like the one installed at Sun Valley Packing, bring many benefits to packaging plants: greater efficiency and cost savings of up to 50%, as in the case of Sun Valley Packing.
These innovative, highly automated systems from UNITEC, which include the anthropomorphic robot for handling empty boxes, such as the one installed at Sun Valley Packing, offer a number of benefits to packaging companies: increased efficiency and effectiveness thanks to cost reductions - of up to 50% (as in the case of Sun Valley Packing), which help to overcome the problem of production costs and make operations more fluid, with the aim of being more effective and profitable. The aim is to be more effective and efficient while increasing returns for producers.
For more information about UNITEC solutions, please send us your request
