Growers and packers are not getting the maximum value from the harvest, because conventional grading methods cannot guarantee an accurate product classification/differentiation. This results in food depreciation because the produce cannot be sold for a premium price if the quality guarantees are not met.
What exactly are the opportunities?
The most demanding customers are often also the best paying buyers. When you look at the forerunners in the produce market, you see that the continuous improvement of grading accuracy results in higher prices. Also, the capability of product differentiation boosts revenues. These graders find a destination for each quality criterion. Not just sell their best quality products but being able to sell all their produce.
The large amount of unnecessary food waste
Because of quantity commitments, quality requirements and inaccurate grading capabilities, (a lot of) products are ending up in the waste stream resulting in unnecessary food waste and loss of revenue. The most important cause of food waste and revenue loss is not being able to get the defects out of the batches. These batches will (sometimes) get rejected, because rotten produce are approved, which should be rejected. These rotten products infect other (good) products during storage and export.
Good products end up in the waste stream
Secondly, to guarantee the quality, good products are sometimes wrongly rejected, and good products end up in the waste stream. With manual grading or if your quality systems are not accurate enough, good products are unnecessarily rejected. These systems set their desired limits such that customer requirements can be met. In doing so, they classify certain products as waste, while these produce can still be sold and eaten. In addition, some products cannot be approved as a complete product, but certain pieces can be used for other purposes like the processing industry.
Make every fruit and vegetable count
At Ellips, we see each fruit & vegetable. We see what good people put into it, and what they expect out of it. Our core mission is to ensure that every piece of fruit or vegetable ends up in its rightful destination, extracting the most value from every harvest – with nothing to waste. We do this through ground-breaking grading machines and sophisticated algorithms that guarantee the most food value. In bottom-line terms, it is very simple: you must be able to
grade more products in less time, with less labor and with better quality and consistency.
How can we work together to make the grading process more sustainable?
There is no space for waste in a sustainable economy. Together with our customers, we tackle (food) waste at the source of the food chain and ensure that every fruit and vegetable counts.In addition to reducing food waste, there are other benefits that sustainable grading machines can offer.
How do we do this?
Ellips contributes to a more sustainable grading process by ensuring that the machinery has the following properties:
✅ Reduce food waste – reduce rejection by a more sophisticated grading technology
✅ Reduce (mechanical) food damage – because of gentle handling machine
✅ Reduce energy waste – due to a well-designed machinery a reduced electricity consumption
✅ Reduce spare parts in stock and the use of spare parts – due to little or no wear in the machine.
✅ Predictable maintenance - By keeping track of the energy consumption of our electrical components the system can notify the customer when maintenance is required.
