The 2022 cherry season in Chile has seen excellent results for fruit and vegetable plants and great satisfaction for the UNITEC team. In fact, thanks to UNITEC's innovative solutions, many Chilean fruit and vegetable plants have been able to manage significant volumes of cherries and have been able to cope with an intense season, such as the one that has just ended, characterized by a late start and an early end.
Innovation has always been part of the UNITEC Group's DNA. Innovation stems from a strong connection with the market and is also reflected in the group's strong focus on after-sales service, providing fast, efficient and reliable responses to its Customers to enable them to overcome even the inconveniences that often characterise a period of very intense work, such as the 2022 cherry season.
UNITEC – with its subsidiary UNITEC Chile, founded in 2011 and growing steadily over the years – has always proven to be close to its Customers thanks to its team of specialized technicians, the wide availability of spare parts on site and its ability to anticipate and foresee possible difficulties that may arise during the season through professional and organized maintenance plans with a strong collaboration between the UNITEC team and the technical team of the Customers.
This is done to provide them with quick and efficient responses, and in this way guarantee not only interventions, but also to avoid interruptions in work during the season and put them in a position to face it in the best possible way.
"This year – said Nour Abdrabbo, Commercial Director of the UNITEC Group and General Manager of the
UNITEC Chile subsidiary – We have installed robotic systems in the feeding of the boxes used for the
harvest, systems from our robotics division that we presented last year in Chile and that have given excellent results to our clients this year and therefore great satisfaction for our team.«.
Furthermore, as Abdrabbo states: “This year we have introduced UNI_SMART_SEAL, an automated end-of-line system, capable of recognising the packaging at the inlet, with the subsequent automatic adaptation to seal the bags of cherries. The industry requires an intelligent and automated system to assist the process in order to make it more efficient and with a lower operating cost than usual. We have introduced this technology in three different warehouses, with good results for our clients.«.
But UNITEC not only offers robotic systems – thanks also to its new UNI Robotics division – to
start and end of the line, but also designs and implements intelligent and automated technological solutions for each phase of the cherry process, from emptying to packaging, including the central phase of quality classification, where vision systems such as Cherry Vision 3.0 are used, up to the final segregation of the boxes and automatic palletisation.
Thanks to the technological solutions implemented for the 100% by the UNITEC – Cherry Vision 3.0 team – the
Operators in the cherry production chain are, in fact, able to inspect the 100% on the surface of each cherry, to classify multiple external quality parameters, difficult to detect with the naked eye, and also to detect internal qualitative parameters, beyond the optical calibre and
color; all with extreme delicacy without damaging these delicate little fruits.
That's not all, Cherry Vision 3.0 also has a very important technological advantage: it is also able to detect with extreme precision the possible presence of cracks or lesions near the fruit's stem (so-called apical damage).
The high intensity of work that characterized the 2022 season, as well as the 2020 season,
characterized by the crisis that affected the world, has highlighted the importance of the role of UNITEC – which has put its team and innovative technological solutions at the service of its clients – as allies in the process of their cherries.
The high level of automation that characterizes the facilities equipped with the solutions
UNITEC Group's technological capabilities enable it to respond perfectly to the needs of the Chilean market: on the one hand, production efficiency is increased and, on the other, a significant reduction in process costs and labour shortages is achieved.
Working every day for the results of its clients: this is UNITEC's mission, to be alongside its Chilean clients in the process of continuous improvement of their businesses, thanks to the professional assistance of its technical staff from the UNITEC Chile subsidiary and the continuous innovation of its technologies, to continue accompanying them towards new successful objectives.
