With almost 100 years of experience, UNITEC has established itself as the leading company in innovative technological solutions for the fruit and vegetable supply chain. The company, based in Lugo (RA), develops patented innovations for the processing of more than 50 types of fruit and vegetables, applying the different skills acquired in the different segments of the chain across the board with an international reach.
UNITEC's technological solutions are used from the field to the warehouse: these are innovative systems that directly help producers, such as the harvesting cart with automatic fruit selection, and also respond to the different phases of the process, where various external and internal quality parameters of the fruit and vegetables are classified non-destructively, as well as the packaging and palletizing phases thanks to robotic anthropomorphic solutions.
Sorting of fruit and vegetables therefore begins in the field with the harvesting cart, which, thanks to the automatic sorting station, provides real-time information on organoleptic characteristics to workers, in order to correctly pick the most suitable fruit and vegetables. Thanks to this UNITEC solution, it is possible to speed up operations in the field, processing more than 20,000 fruits and vegetables per hour, with benefits that are also reflected in the warehouse phase: thanks to the smaller quantity of product to be sorted, savings are achieved in storage and sorting costs, which vary on average around 5-6% of the total.
Ensuring fruit and vegetables of consistent quality is at the heart of UNITEC's projects: the company, in its Research and Development Centre, where more than 150 researchers work, develops specific technological solutions for each fruit, being able to classify fruit and vegetable products on the basis of a multiplicity of independent parameters, evaluated individually, on a plurality of diversified combinations according to the objective of analysis.
For example, thanks to the Blueberry Vision 3 system, which is equipped with the Unical 222 Berry grader, fruit and vegetable plants can non-destructively view the entire surface of each blueberry using sophisticated high-resolution cameras to grade the fruit according to external quality parameters – such as colour and shape defects – in addition to optical sizing. The UNIQ Blueberry system – a highly reliable solution for internal quality grading – completes the package for the blueberry quality grading phase, safeguarding the integrity of each fruit.
Likewise, the 2023 edition of Macfrut sees UNITEC engaged as a technical partner of the International Blueberry Days event and it is also with the support of this review that the Group wishes to emphasize the importance of technological innovation to promote the growth of the blueberry market worldwide, as demonstrated by the results obtained to date by UNITEC technologies; a market that requires a meticulous classification of the qualities of the fruit, to give them the opportunity to withstand long-distance travel, maintaining the appropriate characteristics even at the destination for marketing in the fresh produce market, which must be done by separating at source the fruit that does not meet the necessary requirements.
UNITEC, thanks to its presence in the world with 20 operational headquarters distributed across the 5 continents, thus meets the demands arising from the sector, innovating to respond to each need. Precisely because of the difficulties that have arisen in the industry as a result of the economic and health crises of recent years, with continuous research and innovation, UNITEC designs solutions to meet the challenges that arise in the market to which it is connected.
With anthropomorphic technological systems, UNITEC is able to activate solutions that allow fruit and vegetable plants to respond to the current problem of labor shortages and make tasks that are alienating and exhausting for operators more efficient and automated.
Finally, by integrating automated technological solutions also for the packaging phase, UNITEC enables the evolution of the entire process within the warehouse. With UNI FLOW GENTLE PACKER, operators are able to maximise the efficiency and potential of automatic apple packaging, thanks to a continuous and gentle transfer of the fruit into the alveoli.
UNI INTELLIGENT PACK DATES, a robotic solution capable of arranging dates in trays to orient them in the same direction and, consequently, better organizing the space inside the packaging, is available to operators in the date industry.
The Group has presented many solutions at this edition of Macfrut, where UNITEC, with its 100 years of history, makes available its "technological supply chain", from field harvesting to robotics, to respond to the needs for process improvement in the world's fruit and vegetable plants.
