Machines may cut kiwifruit costs

Press, 1 November 1984, Page 22

Machines may cut kiwifruit costs

PA Auckland The New Zealand kiwifruit crop may be sorted and graded automatically before long, bringing hopes of savings of up to 40 per cent in packing shed labour. A glimpse into the near future for the kiwifruit industry has been on show at the fourth national horticultural field days, at Te Puke. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research has had two machines demonstrating the way kiwifrait can be sorted automatically. One has a rolling conveyer which takes the kiwifruit into a channel, which has a series of drafting gates. <>...•■ The other is a suction cup which will pick up a fruit as > 'it comes past and automatically move it as required by a computer instruction. The designer, Mr John Simpson, the head of the engineering design group at the Auckland industrial development division of the D.5.1.R., says both ideas are near the prototype stage. The drafting gate principle has the capacity to grade kiwifruit into, say, eight grades and divert reject fruit as well. At this stage, the machine;

works to instruction from a microprocessor which diverts every fourth fruit down a different channel. < But in future the microprocessor will be linked to an “image processing station,” which will electronically examine each; fruit, and grade it for size; It will even look for blemishes.

The D.S.LR. is working on. such a piece of equipment.. So far, the drafting, machine is set to handle, five kiwifruit a second,- or' 500 trays of kiwifruit an hour, which is as much as a' four-lane chain grader using human inspection. •The target of those developments is to reduce the soaring labour requirements of the kiwifruit industry in its brief harvest season in May and June. About 7100 people are estimated to have worked in kiwifruit orchards,/ pack-: houses, and cool stores this year. . • One study suggested that 36,000 would be needed for Mr Simpson believes that automation could potentially produce a 40 per cent labour saving in packhouses.

The fruit will still be picked by hand.