Modena (Italy), June 15th 2016. Important news in the land of Italian cherries: Agrintesa cooperative, member of the Apo Conerpo Group, has always been very sensitive to innovation. Now it has set up in its plant in Castelfranco Emilia (Modena) a cutting-edge installation for cherries selection and sorting, that has been developed by Unitec, an international company that specializes in innovating the fruit and vegetables industry, with solutions dedicated to more than 35 types of fruits and vegetables.
The investment – says Cristian Moretti, General Manager of Agrintesa – will enable us to further increase our competitiveness through a steady rise in the level of reliability of our supplies and a growth in the qualitative level of the product grading. This means being more efficient in every phase of the processing with a consequent reduction in costs and a significant increase in the product enhancement”.
“Innovations such as the one introduced by our cooperative in Castelfranco Emilia – affirms Moretti – are fundamental in order to be more competitive at the international level and to fully meet the needs of the most demanding customers, that are willing to pay a premium price for a high quality product.”
“We have completely reviewed our cherry supply chain – adds Moretti – starting from their entry into the warehouse, where we operate through a rapid cooling of products through hydro cooling, up to the next phases entrusted to Unitec technology.”
The new sorting plant was placed in a dedicated area, completely renovated and with a constant temperature control. It is a state of the art technology, highly automated, that can perform all the operations related to cherries processing, from the automatic depalletizing / bins emptying to grading, quality selection and packing, ensuring the full traceability of products. It is a system with a 8 lanes sorting machine that has a productivity of about 4 tons per hour. The line can realize many types of packaging, from punnets to crates with inner trays or bulk products.
“Of course, in order to preserve the quality of cherries – declares Moretti – all the processing phases take place in cold water so their organoleptic characteristics, consistency and shelf-life are protected”.
The plant is equipped with Cherry Vision 2 technology, the system completely developed by Unitec R&D department for the non-destructive selection of internal and external quality of cherries, which represents a great step forward in the analysis of defects of these fruits.
“Thanks to this investment – says the director – Agrintesa can further qualify its offer, providing the market with a product characterized by standards that were unimaginable until today for this fruit, which plays a very important role for our cooperative. Agrintesa has an acknowledged historical tradition and is highly specialized in cherries: in 2015 it processed about 2300 tons of cherries coming especially from the area of Vignola, of which over 60% was granted a PGI certification.”
“We are happy to provide an important company such as Agrintesa with our experience and know-how, that have been acquired in the global industry of cherries processing – says Raffaele Benedetti, sales director of Unitec. – This installation is the result of a close collaboration started with Agrintesa to help them enhance their products by improving consistency and grading of the quality they offer. Today in the world – concludes Benedetti – there are many companies that are achieving important results of quality improvement thanks to our technologies and we are happy to help companies operating in our country to grow with our innovations.”