Quelen Fruits attains EU quality standards with Tomra sorting solutions
pic: Tomra
Chilean walnut producer Quelen Fruits has reported surpassing European quality production standards with the assistance of Tomra Food’s equipment solutions, reports Neill Barston.
The equipment business, which has its parent headquarters in Norway, has been working in the South American country for two decades with its sorting solutions, providing specialised installation services suited to operating conditions within the region.
Notably, the Merquén plant is part of the Quelen Fruit holding, where Tomra Food has also installed a line for processing many types of fruit, from apples to avocados, kiwis and stone fruit. From the beginning, Quelen Fruit wanted to incorporate the European firm’s solutions in its Quelen Plant, located in the commune of Paine, on the outskirts of the Metropolitan Region of Chile.
Consequently, in total, Tomra Food supplied a total of 3 sorting machines: two Nimbus 1200 (one with BSI+ technology) and one Genius 1200.
The 10,000-square-meter facility sits on a 55,000-square-metre plot of land where the company is now also constructing an advanced, 11,000-square-meter packing facility. Here there is the capacity to process up to six million kilograms of in-shell walnuts and 3 million of shelled walnuts annually. Approximately 90% of these nuts are of the Chandler variety and 10% of the Serr variety.
Carlos Sánchez, Quelen plant manager of the company’s nut division, had extensive experience with Tomra’s sensor-based technology and knew its advantages well. “I worked for 8 years in another company where I did market research on sorting equipment, and we chose TOMRA. So, when I started this project, I had this background and knew what to implement – and it has been a success,” he says.
“Europe is one of the most important regions we export to: France, Greece, Italy, Germany and Spain – with a particular push in the latter two countries,” explains Carlos Sánchez (below)
“Europe is a demanding market for quality, so almost everything we export there is Category 1. This requires us to have only one shell in every 200 kilograms. Even so, thanks to Tomra’s technology, we have been able to achieve one shell in every 500 kilograms. Considering that the last three years have been turbulent and that shelled nuts have not yet recovered to their pre-pandemic level, it is more important than ever to have the right equipment. TOMRA was our winning choice from the beginning,” continues Carlos Sánchez.
After analysing its objectives and discussing them with the TOMRA team, Quelen Fruit decided to integrate two NIMBUS and one GENIUS, installed in cascade, into its sorting process. “Focusing on sorting out defects, color and shape, we found the perfect formula. By adding double aspiration of the shell and septum at each of the input hoppers on the line has allowed us to achieve optimal performance,” adds Carlos Sánchez.
As Tomra noted, it has been able to offer a range of combined solutions suited to nut processing, delivering reported benefits including high levels of efficiency, cost reduction and productivity gains
“The current configuration, with three Tomra units in cascade has allowed us to reach 2,700 kilograms per hour, which was the goal we had set ourselves. Of this throughput, 98% is finished product, but we don’t throw anything away. The discarded material is packaged in another type of category that is of interest to specific customers. There is a destination for all our products,” he explains.
As for the process, the product first passes through a 1200mm-wide NIMBUS sorter with BSI+ technology. This unit detects the biometric characteristics of the nuts and their defects and sorts them based on these clearly distinguishable patterns.
The advanced technology BSI module detects even smaller defects than conventional spectral imaging technology and improves sorting quality by retaining almost all of the accepted product, resulting in a better quality of the final product. This solution also reduces the number of passes required and the amount of product breakage.
The sorter detects and eliminates foreign matter, such as sticks, stones and glass, as well as the shell and septum of the nuts (the tissue that separates the two halves inside the shell). It also detects and discards structural defects, such as dehydrated and rancid nuts.
