Pre-mature fruit storage facilities

Every year, the market demands a product that reaches more and more quality requirements. For the fruit sector, this involves following a process from the field to the headquarters and its own traceability. That if it is carried out with a better potential of value, currently the requirements are focused, besides physical parameters such as calibres and penetromy, in more aesthetic aspects such as colour. Achieving this task involves the achievement of a large series of measures for a product that requires uniformity and is affected by a wide range of conditions, especially in the field, such as weather, height of the land, harvesting dates … In addition, in postharvest, there is a great deal of uniformity in the controlled atmosphere processes. All this implies a great work of quality control from the beginning, followed by a rigorous treatment in central promoting the diversification in cold room according to qualities. It is at this time that a better sales strategy can be considered. The steps to be followed in the plant pursue the homogeneity of the product and its processes through the correct storage in the storage room. Each room will follow a specific methodology of cooling, conservation and maturation according to its lot according to its sales forecast. ISOFRED designs, installs and maintains the necessary equipment for this purpose. For the specific case of ripening chambers, it is necessary to control parameters such as gas concentrations, air renewals, air flows, air differential pressure and, of course, temperatures and humidity. It is crucial to ensure that the air flow is equivalent for each pallet. This is the way to guarantee the homogeneity of the treatment. The ripening process intervenes in the metabolism of the fruit and must therefore be able to guarantee good control of this, particularly with regard to cooling capacity and gas concentrations. The control logic must be particularly precise in order to master each of the parameters with a minimum dispersion in their values. The ripening process is achieved by means of controlled heating cycles with control of the metabolic processes of the fruit thanks to the gas analysis and by inserting air renewal cycles in them. The air flow is also inverted in a cyclical way to obtain the balance of the process for each fruit. It is important to design and execute the cold room according to the type of pallet container to be worked on in the plant and to plan the filling of the cold room. This makes it possible to optimise the maturation cycles. The use of inflatable “airbags” allows adaptation to different palletizing and even filling heights. Obviously, the design of the installation must allow the loading and unloading of the total chamber for each cycle so that the distribution of the stowage is conditioned.