Ellips True-AI brings next-generation Citrus Grading to California

California's citrus growers and packers face a familiar set of pressures: labor availability, rising operating costs and retail and export markets that expect consistent quality, no matter the season or variety. Oranges, lemons, limes and mandarins each bring their own grading challenges, from clear rot, scarring, punctures and rind blemishes to internal defects that are invisible to the naked eye. Meeting those standards at scale, batch after batch, is one of the hardest problems in the packhouse.

Ellips Group is bringing its Elisam citrus grader, powered by True-AI grading technology, to California, with a model built specifically for the defects and conditions this market's growers and packers encounter in the field.

Built for California's citrus

Rather than applying a generic grading model to California citrus, Ellips Group's Citrus AI has been developed around the specific defects identified through direct work with California growers and packers. Field data has been collected and logged on the rind conditions, internal disorders and quality variations that show up across California's oranges, lemons, limes, and mandarins, and incorporated into the True-AI model to sharpen grading performance for the varieties and growing conditions specific to this region.

A track record: 3,500+ grading systems across 20 crops and 50 countries

Citrus AI is built on Ellips Group's broader grading platform, engineering and AI expertise, developed across more than 20 crops and 3,500+ grading systems installed in over 50 countries. Within citrus specifically, True-AI's defect models improve as more citrus data comes in: every new citrus customer, season and growing condition adds to the model's accuracy and the collective intelligence behind the system. 

AI grading keeps Agrofrut’s citrus quality consistent at 40+ tons/hour

One of the clearest examples of what this technology can do for citrus comes from Agrofrut, moving more than 25,000 tons of oranges annually along with significant volumes of mandarins and lemons. Facing an increasingly unpredictable labor market and strict quality demands from export customers, Agrofrut installed an Elisam citrus grader powered by Ellips True-AI technology. The system now runs at more than 40 tons per hour, consistently detecting internal and external defects such as clear rot, scarring, punctures, stem and albedo issues, across all the citrus varieties Agrofrut packs.

According to Andreas Pantazis of Agrofrut, the investment has given the company more consistency, more capacity and less dependence on an unpredictable labor supply, while helping it keep pace with the standards of demanding markets.

"This AI grading machine keeps us at the forefront as market leaders. With high capacity and consistent quality, we now have the opportunities and the confidence to meet diverse market demands."

Andreas Pantazis - Agrofrut

How it works: TrueSort and True-AI

At the core of every Elisam grader is TrueSort, Ellips Group's grading software, now enhanced with True-AI. Using singulation, rotating cups, and 3.2 megapixel HD+ multispectral cameras, the system captures a full 360-degree view of each piece of fruit, up to 90 images per citrus fruit, analyzed with 0.2 mm precision. This turns camera data into real-time sorting decisions based on size, shape, color, weight and quality, with the accuracy to catch defects a manual line would miss.

Ellips True-AI analyzes each fruit inside and out, detecting defects such as:

✅ Clear Rot
✅ Blemishes
✅ Calyx damage
✅ Stalks
✅ Creases
✅ Corrugations
✅ Mold
✅ Oleocellosis
✅Albedo breakdown
✅Punctures
✅Scarring
✅End checks
✅Navel deformities
✅Sunburn
✅Bruising
✅Rind breakdown.

This enables consistent grading decisions, improved pack-out quality and greater confidence that every shipment meets customer specifications.

What this means for California packers

For California growers and packers expanding into new varieties, new volumes or new markets, the challenges Agrofrut faced will sound familiar: unpredictable labor availability, rising quality expectations from retail and export customers and the operational pressure of processing large volumes quickly without compromising on grade-out.

The Elisam grader, powered by Ellips True-AI, is designed to meet those challenges directly:

• Less dependence on labor. Automation reduces the number of sorting staff needed to run a line at full capacity, easing the pressure of seasonal labor shortages during peak harvest.
  
  
• Consistent grading across every variety. True-AI defect detection identifies challenging internal and external defects, including clear rot, scarring, punctures, and stem and navel (calyx) conditions, so quality holds steady across oranges, lemons, limes and mandarins, regardless of batch variability.
  
  
• Lower risk of rejection. Even a small percentage of defective fruit can trigger a rejected shipment. Consistent grading protects against costly rejections and reputation damage.
  
  
• High throughput, gentle handling, any operation size. Grading lines run at high volume and high speed while maintaining the gentle product handling citrus requires, in configurations from two to eight lanes to suit operations of any size.
  
• A system that keeps learning. Because Citrus AI's model is built on field-collected defect data, its grading performance is designed to keep improving as more California-specific data is incorporated.

It’s all fully integrated so your entire packhouse works as one

Beyond grading, Ellips Group brings deep experience with fully integrated packhouse solutions, connecting weighers, washing and waxing, drying, palletizing, and packing into one seamless line. Together with local partners, that same one-stop-shop approach is available to California packhouses


 

Looking ahead

California's citrus growers and packers are being asked to do more with less: more consistency, more throughput and more resilience to a shifting labor market, with fewer resources to spare. Ellips Group's Elisam grader, powered by Citrus AI, is built to meet that challenge directly, combining a grading model shaped by California-specific field data with a technology platform proven across 20 crops and more than 3,500 installations worldwide.