Cherries packed on 'most sophisticated' line

Ackio, a specialist fruit packer of blueberries, cherries, cranberries and cherry tomatoes, now operates what it claims is the most sophisticated cherry packing line in Europe.

The new cherry grader, installed at the company’s facility at Evesham, Worcestershire, allows cherries to be selected by various criteria.

It uses the white light spectrum and cameras, which take 50 frames a second of each cherry.

This means that Ackio can detect more of the defects, especially in darker fruits. Being highly automated, the new cherry line also produces a higher yield at lower cost compared with manual quality control.

Ackio has several automated production lines that suit different types of fruit. This includes two grading lines for handling cherries.

These are configured to grade cherries from 15mm to 40mm and will reject anything that falls out of this specification.

The first line gives cherries an Aqualutions wash. It then optically grades out the cherries based on quality and size. They’re then ready for the second line, which uses Ackio’s new grader.

Contact Ackio for more information.