During the last years, Southern Solutions has had an important expansion related to the international solutions that it can provide to the Chilean agro-industry as a whole and specially to the prune industry.
“We are a company devoted to provide technological solutions for the agro-industry, improving their processes with the focus on processed fruits and vegetables”, says Jorge Searle, Southern Solutions agro-industrial manager.
A case of a particular success for the Chilean prune industry is the implementation of Vision System from Ashlock -one of the brands that it offers exclusively- that removes the pits leaving them in the process lines. In fact, four important prune exporters have, already, 17 mechanisms to develop such process.
Vision System is a system that has a photo camera that can analyze up to 1,000 kilos per hour looking for, on a contrast belt, lose or exposed pits in already pitted prunes; it identifies them by color adjustments. Once the pit has been spotted, the time it takes to fall from the area it was to the conveyor belt is calculated to expel this pit by a compress air system the moment it falls on the belt.
On average, Vision System helps to reduce approximately 60% to 70% of pits in the final product. For example, if a process plant for a given prune caliber normally gets 0.5% pits, the same plant processing the same caliber should obtain 0.15% pits using this system. This makes easier the inspection of the final product and helps entering the most demanding markets.
In short, it has three big advantages:
It improves the process efficiency: by identifying and eliminating the pits in a more precise way; the inspection lines are simplified and production is optimized which results in bigger operative efficiency.
It helps entering more demanding markets: the high quality obtained thanks to Vision System allows the companies to meet the high standards of international markets opening opportunities in regions with higher quality requirements.
It provides adaptability and precision: the system can take up to 16 pictures per second, distinguishing with precision the pits in the prunes which guarantees a higher quality control.
In short, the implementation of Ashlock Vision System represents an important advance for the prune industry improving the quality of the product and strengthening the competitiveness in the international market.
Jorge Searle underlines that an excellent post-sale service is the hallmark of the company; it aims to satisfy the customer needs permanently and continuously. “We have a team of experts in each one of the solutions we offer that visit weekly the facilities where our equipment and machines are. In this way we stay close to the user, we can oversee the correct use and operation of our equipment and we obtain information on ways to improve the processes”, he says.
This is a way to find and offer technological innovations that are meaningful to improve their customer’s productivity in various aspects of the agroindustry, an area the company knows deeply.
Ashlock is a world leader in prune pitting as well as in cherries and olives. Southern Solutions has been representing Ashlock in Chile for more than 12 years and in 2023 made available to the industry a sorter called Vision System, a system that has been tested in the US and Chile with excellent results. This is “one of the answers that the Chilean prune industry has to match and even surpass countries with better technical processes in terms of pit presence”, adds Searle.
