Plum pickings

A top US dried fruit processor picks a prime sorter for it premium dried plums FOR four generations, the Mariani Packing Company has grown and procured, dried, processed and packaged only the finest and freshest dried fruit from prime growing regions around the world. The Vacaville, California company is the largest independent processor of dried fruit in the U.S. and with operations in California and Thailand, now sells more than 125 million pounds of product annually for more than 50 countries around the world. Every Mariani product represents our family heritage of premium quality dried fruit, including orchard fruit like apricots, apples and plums, raisins and dates, berries, sun-dried tomatoes, yogurt-coated raisins, and most recently an organic line of dried fruits and nuts. While cherishing its heritage, the company embraces change ?installing the most modern and technically superior equipment available to help assure that customers always receive the highest quality product. Among its investments for its Marysville, California facility is state-of-the-art equipment to identify and remove defects and foreign material from the product stream at full production speeds: Key Technology's Optyx 6000 series with Raptor Laser Technology that marries two superior processes ?color cameras and laser technology ?in one sorter. Mark Krause, plant operations manager at Mariani in Marysville, says the Optyx with Raptor combination provides the most consistent product quality for the fruit processor. “The laser is ideal for removing foreign material like sticks, rocks, and leaves. The cameras are ideal for removing defects like growth cracks, skin blemishes, and mold based on the object's size, shape, and color,?he explains. Featuring a 48-inch wide scan area, one Optyx 6000 with Raptor inspects up to nine metric tons (20,000 pounds) of Mariani's dried plums per hour. State-of-the-art electronics deliver the same ultra-high resolution as Key's 24-inch wide Optyx 3000 with Raptor to detect the smallest defects and foreign material. Optyx with Raptor is a versatile platform that can be configured for either single-side or top-and-bottom scanning by multiple sensors including color, Vis/IR (visible infrared), and monochromatic cameras as well as Raptor Laser Technology and Key's newest FluoRaptor fluorescence-sensing laser technology. To effectively sort Mariani's product, their sorter features a top-mounted color camera, a bottom-mounted color camera, and a top-mounted Raptor laser. “We measure the success of Raptor on the foreign material removed. With our old sorter, we removed 60 to 70 percent of the foreign material before hand sorters removed the rest. With Raptor, we抮e achieving 90 percent foreign material removal and that's enabled us to reduce the number of people hand sorting. The new sorter's performance on the dried plum line has been so good, we decided to install another Raptor sorter on our raisin line.? Foreign material removal is extremely important to food safety, and for a premium product with a family name behind it, it's even more important to maintain the trust of both retail and industrial customers. “When you抮e focused on producing the highest quality product, you need to have the highest quality technology,?Krause says.Nike Schuhe