APPLE packers will be better able to identify internal defects thanks to a partnership between a Melbourne company and its Dutch ally.
GP Graders has entered into a technology partnership with Ellips of Holland to introduce new equipment which uses light spectrometer technology and takes 10 images sliced across each apple to detect internal browning and core rot wherever it is located in the fruit.
The technology also analyses the entire mass of the apple, slicing the apple at 10 incremental stages in order to check for internal rot or browning wherever it is located through the fruit.
Older technology only took one light image through the centre of an apple.
GP Graders managing director, Stuart Payne, said the technology will change the industry, and strengthen the packer's ability to provide defect free apples to supermarkets.
Ellips chief executive officer, Erwin Baker, oversaw the installation operating first hand at GP Graders’ head office in Melbourne, where it has been fitted to an operating apple line.
Bins of apples were run through the system allowing GP Graders to intensively test and demonstrate the technology.
“The results were remarkable,” Mr Payne said.
Of those apples discarded to an exit with a reading of internal browning and core rot, 100 per cent of them in fact showed those characteristics when cut open.
Of those apples that were deemed not to have a reading of internal or core rot, only one single apple showed specific characteristics when cut into during the collation of test results.
The total sample size was 1500 apples.
GP Graders has opened its doors until mid August for industry stakeholders to see live demonstrations of the technology with several sales already being concluded within days of its release.
GP Graders have been designing and manufacturing turn-key apple grading and packing lines since their beginning in 1963 with hundreds of packing lines in operations throughout Australia and the world.