UNITEC Cherry Vision and the Chilean cherry season

The Chilean Cherry Season is so important it keeps all the operators in the cherry sector with bated breath, not only in Chile, but all over the world. Now, it has come to an end. Therefore, it is now time to draw the conclusions, and for UNITEC it’s time to be pleased. UNITEC is in fact very happy with the Results achieved by its Customers: The Chilean Packing Houses that have relied on UNITEC Cherry Vision 2 and Cherry Vision 3.0 technology to handle their cherries have obtained great benefits on many fronts. "Cherry Vision 3.0 has allowed us to significantly reduce the amount of people on the line. In addition, it was able to detect all defects in the fruit, which is essential for us, as we aspire to a level of quality suitable for a demanding market like the Chinese one". These are the words of Yue Chan, Administration and Finance Director of Gold Anda, a company with headquarters in Shenzen, China, and an important operational branch in Curicó, Chile. In 2019, Gold Anda installed a 12-lane line equipped with Cherry Vision 3.0 system in Curicó. And the Results were not long in coming. Through its high-resolution cameras, which help to analyze 100% of the cherry and detect its organoleptic characteristics with a precision and reliability that are hard to imagine with any other system, Cherry Vision 3.0 has allowed Gold Anda to obtain cherries of Consistent Quality over time and at the same time, to achieve significant savings in labor costs. Year after year, the Chinese market is becoming more and more coveted by packing houses that want to expand to a country with growing business opportunities. In order to penetrate a country like this, where very high quality standards are demanded, the product must be characterized by homogeneity within each individual package and uniformity between one supply and another. This is precisely the product resulting from the handling and quality selection carried out by the UNITEC Team with its exclusive and unique technologies, which are able to guarantee these Results in a reliable and safe way. Andrés Calvo, General Manager of the Chilean packing house Los Robles, also talked about the Results achieved. Los Robles tackled the season with a 24-lane UNITEC line equipped with Cherry Vision 3.0 technology: "We have seen how Cherry Vision 3.0 works really well to select color, to detect soft fruits or damages caused by the pecking of birds. Achieving consistency within the final package was easy!" As a matter of fact, Cherry Vision 3.0 sorts the fruits with great precision according to multiple quality parameters: external quality, softness, shape defects, in addition to the classic caliber and color. The parameters are classified independently of each other and according to various combinations, thus allowing the packing house to offer high quality cherries that meet the taste and expectations of the final consumer, as well as to classify the fruits according to the storage and distribution needs of the different target markets. Andrés Calvo also spoke very positive words for the UNITEC Team: "The UNITEC technical team, mechanics, electronics and all personnel who assembled the two lines is a first-class team! Every technician in his field is very good and we are very happy about it. […] They met all the deadlines, from the delivery of the line until the installation was completed, and everything that came out along the way was dealt with very quickly". Behind the Results that UNITEC allows its Customers to reach, there is indeed always the will to be at the Customer's service, to get in the game. Commitment, interest, dedication are the added values that UNITEC puts in its work. Professionalism and continuous innovation are the basis of everything, but they are not enough when it comes to aiming for excellence. And the UNITEC Team never holds back, from the first developments of the project to the final stages of the production process. Andrés Calvo wanted to underline another asset of UNITEC technology, the fact that it’s user-friendly: "The operators can use it very well. Just think that the operator who handled it had never used this system before, and after three days, he were managing it perfectly!" As a matter of fact, Cherry Vision 3.0 is equipped with clear and intuitive interfaces that allow careful monitoring even by those who are using it for the first time. Hugo Vidal, General Manager of the Chilean packing house Tenofruit, also spoke with satisfaction about the Results achieved with the help of UNITEC technology. In the past year Tenofruit purchased a 6-lane cherry line equipped with Cherry Vision 2 technology. "As an exporter – Hugo Vidal said – I see we have a much better final package than if we were working with other sorting lines, with other defects detectors. We get the fruit sorted exactly the way we want it: we tell the line that we want a final package with a product of excellent quality, or lower quality, or as we prefer, and the line gives us a package exactly like this!" An example? Cherry Vision technology makes it possible to separate "Premium" quality cherries, which have very fine organoleptic characteristics and are perfect for export to Asia, from mid-range cherries or cherries destined for the food industry. Hugo Vidal then spoke about how impressed he was by the visit to the UNITEC headquarters in Italy: "It’s incredible, entering the UNITEC headquarters is like entering a laboratory! There, we realized that UNITEC lines are really produced with unparalleled quality, from the moment the UNITEC engineering Team designs the line until the moment they install it". Hugo Vidal then went on to talk about the proactivity and timeliness shown by the UNITEC Team: "After negotiations, they gave us deadlines they met. Actually, the roles were reversed! UNITEC insisted that we had everything ready before the installation arrived. The line was started up before the date we had agreed with UNITEC!" Results like the ones just described fill with joy and give new strength to the UNITEC Team, which every day works to bring real Results to its Customers in Chile and in the rest of the world.