“Second water extractor makes us a lot more flexible”

Robert Elshof, Elshof Organic Fruit:

“Second water emptier makes us a lot more flexible”

Tholen – Elshof Organic Fruit in Dronten, which trades in organic hard fruit, purchased a second water drain from Burg Machinefabriek this year. “We already had a crate drain from Burg and because we were very satisfied with it, the choice for a second machine was obvious. We didn’t do a lot of research,” says Robert Elshof.

“We needed more capacity, but we made this investment mainly to be more flexible. We certainly don’t get the maximum capacity out of the machine, but the organic trade still consists largely of smaller batches. With two lines, we can easily switch between apples and pears and different batches. For example, if we are sorting apples and there is a last-minute demand for pears, we can switch to the second line at the same time. Otherwise, we sometimes had to ask customers to wait until the next day, but now we can serve every customer every day.”

Our task is to be an excellent supplier of organic apples and pears every day. We have to focus on our product every day. It’s great when you can work with equipment in the warehouse and cold store that you don’t have to worry about. Burg has been supplying these machines for decades, and we enjoy working with them. We have come to know Burg as a solid, reliable company with very loyal service technicians. The only downside is that they come from Zeeland,” laughs Robert.

As in the conventional hard fruit trade, the supply of organic apples and pears is quite large this year. “In our sales countries, such as Scandinavia and Germany, there was also sufficient product on the market for a long time. Now, however, stocks are dwindling and there is more room in the market. There are some concerns about the shelf life of the fruit, but I expect those batches to be off the market by December. In any case, sales are continuing nicely. The fruit will all find a buyer,” says Robert.

The line supplied to Elshof Organic Fruit consists of a portal emptier for both apples and pears with the ability to unstack four full crates and stack four empty crates. Above the emptying reservoir, the crate sinks into the water to the maximum level. At the same time, the crate is tilted so that the fruit flows out of the crate. Tilting also allows for capacity expansion if floating products, in the case of apples, are also tilted.

A simple touchscreen control makes it easy to switch between apple and pear modes for emptying the crates. Apple mode is used for floating fruit and pear mode for non-floating fruit.

The line includes an automatic crate height finder that allows all types and sizes of crates to be processed together without adjustment. The line has V-belt units for optimal separation of the fruit and optimal cup occupancy on the sorting machine.