Nut and dried fruit processors, packers and growers can discover the latest technologies and sorting equipment from TOMRA Sorting Food at May’s World Nut and Dried Fruit Congress.
The team from TOMRA have been shortlisted for the event’s Innovation Award for its Nimbus BSI free fall sorting machine.
The World Nut and Dried Fruit Congress will take place in Antalya, Turkey, from 22-24 May at the Rixos Sungate Antalya complex. TOMRA will be at booth 15 in Hall Maximus Foyer (Balsu Foyer).
TOMRA market development director Bjorn Thumas said: "Processors, packers and growers can meet with our team to find out about our wide portfolio of sorting equipment and state-of-the-art technologies for their products.
"Attending events like this presents us with a great opportunity to meet our customers face-to-face and speak to them directly about what they want their processing equipment to achieve and how our sorting solutions can make their business more productive and efficient."
With a combination of various sorting technologies, the Nimbus free fall sorting machine has biometric signature identification (BSI) to meet high requirements of the food industry and individual processors for safe and excellent food quality by removing unwanted material.
BSI technology detects the biometric characteristics of nuts, dried fruits and other commodities. The technology is the next-generation of spectral imaging, introduced to identify the material’s unique fingerprint.
All information detected in a specific spectrum of light is analysed by an in-house designed sensor module, compared and classified at the speed of light.The system identifies the sole biometric signature of either good product or defects, and sorts based on clear distinguishable patterns.
The flying beam principle (patent pending) implements only two halogen light sources per sensor module, in combination with a rotating polygon.
A concentrated and focused light beam allows maximum light efficiency, resulting in a significant energy minimisation and no increased heating effect. This allows the Nimbus BSI to combine both spectral imaging and lasers on one sole machine.
The Nimbus scan path includes a dust protection shield, ensuring stable and reliable sorting results as dust cannot reach the optical inspection window. A BSI module detects smaller defects compared to conventional spectral technology, enhancing sorting quality and retaining nearly all the good material.
The module reduces the number of passes needed and level of breakage or bruising, and offers users lower labour time and higher throughput, yield and efficiency in the rest of the processing line.
The Nimbus BSI can also be used effectively for reverse sorts or recycle sorts where the volume of ‘bad’ is higher than the ‘good’, targeting good product rather than faulty material, through the touch of a button.
The World Nut and Dried Fruit Congress is considered to be one of the world’s best known industry events by providing representatives from the industry the opportunity to learn about the latest technologies and debate in round table events, seminars and keynote speaker presentations.