What is Hectre Color Grade?
Hectre Color Grade is part of our Top Down solution, where the camera is installed above the conveyor belt in the Hydrocooler. As cherry bins pass underneath, Top Down detects, measures and defines the color grade of the fruit directly at reception. This system delivers mass-sized samples with 95% accuracy and at high speed. Size data is available in seconds and can be integrated into your systems via API.
With Color Grade, you gain deeper insights into the color profile of your fruit. For example, you can determine what percentage of your cherries are red enough for export, or if they are too red and should be sent to a nearby buyer. This information is captured with a single photo and can be obtained right in the receiving area of the packing plant. Imagine the advantages of having this crucial information much earlier in the production cycle.
Some of our US customers, including Monson Fruit, Borton Fruit and Kershaw Fruit, along with European industry leaders such as VOG and Adrian Scripps, have begun using Color Grade and are reporting great accuracy.
How Can Using Hectre Top Down with Automatic Size and Color Grade Capture at Receiving Benefit Your Packing Plant?
25% Downtime Reduction: Optimize your sorting efficiency: Automatically capture fruit size and color grade at reception, allowing for accurate machine calibration prior to packing. This reduces the risk of costly downtime while maximizing sorting efficiency.
Efficiently Coordinate Fruit Distribution: Strategic Maturity-Based Allocation: Use accurate color profiles to assess fruit maturity and make informed distribution decisions. Allocate fruit with shorter shelf life to nearby markets, ensuring it arrives in optimal condition and meets quality standards.
Speed up Processing Times: Quality Control in Seconds: Automate size and color sorting at receiving, significantly reducing the need for manual sampling. Achieve sorter-level accuracy with a sample size 4000% larger than traditional methods.
Sell your Fruit at the Best Price: Informed Sales Decisions: Provide your sales team with accurate size and color data prior to packaging, allowing them to commit to export orders with confidence and secure better pricing in the market.
Become the Packer of Choice for Growers: Real-Time Feedback: Provide immediate feedback to growers on size and color, allowing them to adjust their crop on the fly. This improves your service offering, positioning your packing plant as the preferred choice for growers.
So How Does It Work?
Hectre Color Grade allows you to easily set up different grade classifications for each of your varieties, with the flexibility to configure them to match the grading standards at your packing plant. You can configure color intensity and percentages to define different grades.
This process may sound familiar, as it is similar to adjusting color intensity thresholds on a sorting machine. Depending on when you want to receive this information, either at the packing plant receiving site or directly in the field right after harvest, you can take photos of the top layer of your bins using the Hectre Hand-Held app or your Top Down setup. Within seconds, you will receive color grade information along with the size distribution for that lot.
Furthermore, thanks to this flexibility, Hectre Color Grade can accommodate more types of fruit and works perfectly for green and yellow fruit as well.
How Accurate is Color Grading When Only Taking a Photo of One Side of the Fruit?
Hectre Color Grade achieves accurate, aggregated color grade information from just one photo of the top half of each fruit using statistical inference over the entire lot.
Assuming that fruit from the same batch is generally similar, we use statistical inference from all the top halves of the fruit in the batch to infer what is likely to be on the bottom. For example, if no areas of less distinct color are visible on the top layers of fruit in the batch, it is highly unlikely that the bottom half of any other fruit is green. This approach allows for reliable color classification without needing to capture all of the fruit.
A common concern we hear is that pickers might place the best colored fruit on the top layer. While this can occur, it is difficult to do so consistently at a scale that significantly impacts results. With respect to size, our results have consistently shown that we are within ±5% of accuracy compared to a sorter.
Interested in learning more?
Hectre Color Grade not only improves the efficiency of your packing operations, it also provides peace of mind by giving you the confidence of knowing the color grade of your fruit from the start.
Request a demo to see it in action.
