Have you ever wondered why it is important to grade fruit and vegetables as accurately as possible?
Well here are a few reasons:
Losses as a result of substandard products included in your shipment reaching the market and causing the whole shipment to be downgraded.
Accurate grading ensures the consumer gets good value for the price they pay for produce.
Grading prevents defective produce from damaging healthy produce.
Grading/ sizing correctly makes for easier packing and neater packs.
Grading allows the market to be fair to both consumers and producers.
Effective grading builds trust between consumers and producers.
So if you are a carrot producer, how can you grade effectively so that you and the consumer can get the best value out of your crop?
MECHANICAL GRADING BY SIZE:
Diameter: This system uses rollers to grade by diameter. This method on its own works very well only if the carrots going to market are not going to be bagged or to a retail outlet that does not demand length conformity.
Length: Length graders offer grading in various different lengths. This is very important if the carrots are going to be bagged by uniform length with an automatic or semi–automatic bagger.
The Ideal Combination: Many pack houses use a combination of both roller and length graders i.e. they grade by length and then diameter and then bag for the market.
Quality Grading: This is generally carried out visually/ manually but is not accurate due to fatigue of the person/s carrying out the task.
All of the above methods only grade by size and require a manual line to remove defective produce.
Kerian Roller grader
ADVANCED GRADING:
Fully Automatic Optical Grading: For those producers that require advanced grading for their carrots, Newtec have created the Celox C-UHD. This cleverly designed vegetable powerhouse, sorts carrots by length, diameter, volume, shape and quality. The software of the intelligent camera has a capacity of approximately 50 billion calculations per second and ensures a complete surface assessment of the carrots.
Advanced graders such as the Newtec Celox XTP (view video) can grade up to 15 tons per hour into 6 sizes.
RV12 Celox Optical Grader
Goldpack is here to help you make critical decisions and offer, advice, support, guidance, system design and installation to optimise pack house profitability. Once installed, we partner with you all the way to the market.
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