The combined effort of Plant & Food Research and Compac, part of Tomra Food, has won the PwC Commercial Impact Award at the 2019 KiwiNet Awards for the development of world-leading fruit grading and sorting technologies – Compac’s Spectrim and Inspectra 2.
Spectrim is an optical sorting platform that enables unrivalled external grading capabilities. The Compac development team worked with Plant & Food Research and customers to understand the challenges the industry faces and to deliver the future of produce sorting.
Inspectra 2is Compac’s latest platform designed to accurately detect and grade internal fruit defects. Launched in 2016, the system is non-invasive and uses near-infrared (NIR) technology to test internal properties by measuring the spectra of light transmitted through every piece of produce.
External appearance is important for buyers’ purchase decisions, but internal quality is critical for consumer satisfaction. Beyond protecting and enhancing brand, NIR can increase profitability through supply chain optimization and reducing food waste.
Both Spectrim and Inspectra 2 help reduce manual handling of fruit and vegetables and increase the volume of produce graded as premium at the same time. Benefits of the system includes the high-resolution detection of external and internal defects in 10-15 fruits per second as it moves along the grader.
Compac CEO Ken Moynihan said the award recognises their belief of creating high quality systems that help industry create gain and reduce pain.
“Spectrim and Inspectra 2are globally leading systems that are built with locally manufactured machines and locally researched technologies. It commands a 30 per cent price premium on their competitors.”
Plant & Food Research Business Manager Brian Ward added, “We have a deep and long-standing relationship with Compac. For 20 years we’ve been working together through our shared vision of delivering commercial solutions that meet industry’s needs.”
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