Best targets Asian tiger with new sorting solution centre
Flemish prime minister Kris Peeters recently opened Best’s latest centre at its headquarters in Leuven, Belgium, where the firm already has one such facility.
Other such sites are located in Denver (US) and Hanghzou (China).
Best has 20 sorting machines available for customers (including food firms) to test across the 4 sites, and said it offers multiple configurations of each model for different food sector applications.
A company spokeswoman told FoodProductionDaily.com that the company planned to open more such centres across the world.
She said: “The objective for the upcoming years is to focus more on the Asian markets, and also on the recycling sector. Opening the second solution centre here is one step in that plan.
Product defect removal
Such centres helped customers identify the benefits of sorting solutions, the spokeswoman said, with customers sending food products to Best, which tested and demonstrated product options.
Best then either wrote a report for the client, or customers themselves witnessed the tests and helped write the report, she said, “helping them decide where a sorting solution solves a problem”.
She added: “The results can also help the customer decide if the defects in his product can be removed as he would want them to be.”
“They see the machines here, how they will be installed within a given production line. So it’s a realistic test or demonstration that we try to organise.”
Best has also launched 2 new free-fall laser/camera sorting machines for the food sector, one of which, Nimbus, is designed to sort nut and vegetable products, while Opus is suited for individually quick frozen (IQF) fruit and vegetable packing lines.
With Nimbus, Best said that laser technology was able to identify foreign material, while cameras also identified discolorations and shape differences in food during product free-fall.
“The sorter detects all colour, structure, size and shape defects from a stream of good products,” Best said, and was also able to sort products according to biological characteristics.
The spokeswoman said: “Such biological technology is not new for us. But it mainly means that, if you have a fungus on the skin of the food, then we can also detect that.”
“In the case of nuts, for example, we can detect aflatoxins [mycotoxins that can cause cirrhosis of the liver].”
‘Revolutionary’ digital technology
Nimbus also incorporates what the company claims is “revolutionary technology” that removes the need to select and change reference drums for different products.
This is a via digital module called Flex Sort, which the firm said would enable customers to increase ease of operation and uptime.
Best said advantages of its new modular Opus sorter included its “small footprint and an ideal 1m inspection width to integrate within an IQF fruit and vegetable packing line”.
Laser technology allowed Opus to detect foreign material, based on structural and biological differences, the firm said.
“Contaminations such as glass, cardboard and metal are detected and rejected from the good product, providing optimum sorting efficiency and an extremely low false reject,” Best said.
Both machines also incorporate ‘3-way sorting’, which the spokeswoman explained thus: “The product is scanned on different levels and we have different outputs, for example: the good product, foreign bodies and discolorations, according to the setting.”
