The future is mechanical

MAGNETIC EFFECT

Brian Hills at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich has seen the light. He believes that Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) can be the future of maturity testing for the fresh produce industry.

The theoretical physicist is two years into a research and development project - 50 per cent funded by Defra - that aims to produce an MRI scanner for the fresh produce industry that replicates the performance of the MRI machinery so successfully used in the medical sector.

“I asked myself why there is no NMR technology used in the fresh produce industry,” said Hills. “Near Infra-red (NIR) technology has been developed and is used. But the market potential for NMR in the fruit and vegetable quality sector is enormous, for foreign body detection, internal maturity analysis and control in processing.”

The vision is that an MRI sensor, which uses NMR technology, wrapped around a conveyor belt, can scan a product passing through for internal defects, degree of ripeness etc. But conventional MRI is too expensive. A whole body scanner costs a hospital upwards of £1 million, “no packhouse is going to pay that and all the components of the conventional MRI scanner are extremely expensive,” said Hills.

He has instead concentrated on developing a low-cost MRI option and he is now showcasing his results to date. Five food companies, including Orchard House Foods which is trialling the Hills prototype on oranges for processing, are already assisting with the project, as is machinery and labelling specialist Sinclair International, says Hills.

After assessing a number of options for furthering his revolutionary concept, Hills found that conventional imaging techniques were not necessarily the way forward and has developed a prototype based on the motional relativity principle, which sees a conveyor belt of fruit moving through a static-sensor assembly.

“So far we have only achieved one dimensional imagery, but the feasibility has been proved,” said Hills. “This is embryonic, future technology, but it will be commercially available within the next few years.”

SEED PLANTER SAVES TIME AND COSTS

Phillip Bosworth, export sales manager of Standen Engineering, part of the Richard Pearson group of companies, told the HRI Warwick audience about a new fully automatic seedling transplanter, which is now being launched onto the market.

He said that the potential cost and time efficiencies available to growers will be significant, compared to what they have been used to when using semi-automatic and manual methods.

The new machine is the product of 10 years of research and a £750,000 investment by the company. That level of financial input leaves a company with straightforward objectives, said Bosworth.

“The machine has to eclipse all others that have gone before it,” he said. “It has to look right, work right and deliver a rapid and noticeable return on investment. This is a market that needs fast payback and we have been fully aware of that throughout the development process.”

The machine, with one operator, can do the work of around 14 manual transplanters, he said, and with two operators it can cover 27 acres a day. The precision technology, smart software and state-of-the-art Mitsubishi industrial equipment have been used to optimise speed and accuracy of performance, which in turn will speed up the payback terms.

The cost savings have been calculated at £108,000 a year if used for 2,500 acres - which would equate to an 18-month payback period on a considerable initial investment.

The 1.5 tonne machine has gone into use in the last four weeks and is capable at its most efficient of planting four plants a second, although it can work at quicker speeds. “We have gone for the latest equipment which tends to be the most expensive,” said Bosworth. “It is the fastest and best machine available on the market - and of course, it’s British.”

PROGRESS MADE ON MUSHROOMS

Jim Rowley is carrying out a project under the auspices of HRI Warwick for the UK mushroom production industry, to analyse the option of mechanising the mushroom harvest.

Just two months into the project, he has already made progress towards understanding the obstacles, the potential benefits and the design of an implementation model.

He said the fact that import penetration has demoralised the UK industry in recent times and significantly reduced the number of farms producing mushrooms - “90 per cent of production in the UK is restricted to 12 farms,” he said - has made the possibility of automation appear even more prohibitive cost-wise.

“It is a very segmented market, with a lot of small growers marketing their own product, and it is increasingly difficult to source the labour required to harvest mushrooms,” Rowley said. “Safety and ethical audits demanded by the supermarkets are adding to costs. And in the UK there is more of a demand for the fresh, individually selected type of mushroom, than from the processing market, which lends itself more to mechanisation.”

A joint Silsoe Research Institute/HRI pilot project in the mid 1990s established the feasibility of mechanical harvesting for the mushroom industry, but the two-year payback period it forecast put the hand-to-mouth industry off.

There is a strong argument to say that the bigger companies may have missed the boat, but Rowley believes that it is not too late yet.

“It needs more investigation,” he said. “Why were the findings of the project not taken up by the industry - was it a marketing issue, down to the fear of technology or to the apparently high capital costs? Or was it that the loan potential was not that good, compared say with that afforded to the Dutch industry?”

Rowley said that at this early stage of his research, he can see three options. “The industry could take up the Silsoe harvester, developed during the SRI/HRI project; it could adopt a suck-it-and-see approach by automating its picking process bit by bit and spreading the investment risk; or it could do nothing and take its chances,” he said.

“It is a highly complex issue. I haven’t seen many companies out there so far that have tackled it [automated harvesting] on a commercial basis. But we have seen the trends and things do not look too optimistic. Doing nothing is the worst of the three options.”

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