Ceres Fruit Growers (CFG) is one of South Africa’s largest and oldest apple and pear packing and storage facilities, and the management team at CFG report that they are satisfied with their newly installed Greefa Combisort cup sizer packing line with Greefa’s iQS Performance Plus optical sorting, and in-feed system designed and built by Greefa and MED Automation. MED Automation is the exclusive Sub-Saharan agent for Greefa, a manufacturer of fresh produce sorting technology based in the Netherlands.
CFG’s impressive new state-of-the-art packing system for apples and pears has been installed in a beautifully restored pack house building which is flooded with natural light. In addition to the optical sizer/sorter, the packing line and the packing tables, MED Automation and Greefa also custom-built the fruit infeed bin dumper and flooder machinery which assists the fruit to enter the packing line. The new packing facility has significantly increased the company’s packing production outputs, from 1500 bins of fruit per week to between 2500 and 2700 bins of fruit weekly.
MED Automation and Greefa are proud to have successfully provided CFG with the packing line design and installation service that they required. CFG’s Management team members have provided detailed positive feedback on the process and results of this installation.
CFG Management members with the newly installed packing line: from left to right: Joe Hanekom: CFG Manager Production, Rahim Hassan: CFG Manager Engineering and Francois Malan: CFG Managing Director
CFG feedback on their new Greefa packing line
CFG Managing Director, Francois Malan, explained that CFG are currently packing one of the biggest apple and pear harvests that the Ceres Valley has experienced in recent times, so the completion of this project has come at a very good time. He added that the company’s satisfaction with the new packing facility’s functionality and performance was the result of meticulous planning and teamwork between the MED Automation and Greefa team, KUBE Architects, DSV Electrical engineers, CFG’s project team and other service providers.
According to CFG Manager of Production, Joe Hanekom, the CFG Management team has been very pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of the defect sorting capacity of the new machine. The optical sorter is 94% accurate and it can detect internal defects such as corky spot inside the fruit that are often not visible from the outside of the fruit. He explained that at times, the cameras in newly installed optical sorters need some adjustment before they work correctly, but with this new system, the cameras worked almost perfectly from the start.
“During the past few years our growers have steadily been increasing their production volumes of bicoloured pears and we are now able to market good volumes of bicoloured pears from January to October,” explains Malan. He added that this growth as well as the projection for future growth in volumes provided the motivation for their new expansion as it became clear that CFG needed to improve both their packing capacity and sorting accuracy.
“The sorting capacity of the Greefa optical sizer has significantly improved the consistency in specifications of the fruit in the sorting and packing process,” says Rahim Hassan, Manager of Engineering Services at CFG. “For our customers, this dependable consistency is a very important requirement.” Hassan explained that although the manual sorting process has been replaced, CFG has been able to redeploy all their former sorting staff as packers and no staff were laid off by the installation of the new pack line.
“We are very particular about the ergonomics of our packing stations and CFG believes in inclusiveness. Together with the company’s line managers, we carefully considered the ergonomics of the packing line design, including the detailed requirements of the packing line and packing stations,” stressed Hassan. The significant change in design of the packing stations has meant that packers no longer need to lift packed boxes of fruit. Once the box is packed and closed, it is mechanically removed from the packing station and diverted to the palletizing area. The ergonomic improvements had a significant impact on productivity, as the productivity with the previous Ventura packing line was 55kg to 60kg per manhour. With the new pack line CFG is achieving an average 90kg per man-hour and the potential exists for some further improvement on this achievement.
Greefa Optical Sizer
From conceptualisation to completion with MED Automation and Greefa
Once CFG made the decision to repurpose an old pack house and install a new packing line, the Management team started a comprehensive research and planning process, and it took two years before construction could begin. “The design and implementation of a packing line and the supporting machinery is a complex, multi-faceted process and there was a large range of variables that we needed to consider,” says Malan.
“Our team had to make the decision together and we were not just fixed on one service provider. The packing line needed to accommodate both apples and pears, and sorting and packing pears is more challenging. It was therefore necessary to find the best possible hybrid system that would work for both commodities. An important part of our research was visiting other pack houses to study their packing lines during the planning process. We looked at the high-speed packing lines from several packing machinery companies. The companies that we dealt with all provided good offerings, so deciding which one to choose was not easy. Although high-speed packing lines usually run faster that the cup sizers, we decided to install a cup sizer type of packing line as it is easier to achieve singulation as well as good rotation of pears under the cameras in the sorter with a cup sizer than with high-speed lines and this hybrid system thus best suited our requirements.”
The process was hampered by the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic as restrictions on travel complicated the planning and construction process and the shortages of raw materials such as steel caused by the global logistical disruptions. “We were hoping to complete the project by Mid-February 2022, but we finally had the system up and running by the second half of April 2022,” explained Hanekom.
“Once the construction and installation of the packing line was completed, Greefa/ MED Automation provided us with the services of their packing line expert to do on-site training with our staff for four weeks,” says Hanekom. “This technician had been closely involved and on site regularly throughout the installation process, and this after-installation service was helpful as he assisted us with training in all the aspects of the running of the system and helped us to get up to speed quickly. It is also reassuring that we know that he remains on standby to assist us if we should experience any problems with the system.”
Packing line view
Conclusion
Malan concluded that CFG has had a long-standing relationship with MED Automation and Greefa and had worked well with them in the past. “We chose to go with their proposal and have been very satisfied with the results. Our criteria were fruit friendliness and increased productivity, and it has been rewarding to see that the system has delivered convincing results in both these categories.”
He added that the process of designing and installing the packing line and additional machinery had been the result of a massive team effort. “The CFG Management and growers are proud of what we have achieved here, and we feel confident to say that the end result is good.”
Photos and text by Louise Brodie
louise@lucentlands.co.za