Spanish company Citrosol has recorded a 50% uptick in sales over the last three years with technology that controls residue levels while also removing dirt from postharvest drenchers and pools.

CEO Benito Orihuel told www.freshfruitportal.com the Zero Spillage System gave doses that ensured fungicide concentrations were kept stable.

"The system keeps constancy in the concentration of fungicides or active ingredients, and eliminates all dirtyness in the drenchers and the bins; there are all kinds of waste that can get in the pools and bins like sand, dust, white plaster soil," he said.

"In the U.S. and South Africa for example, you have extension officers who are sent in to inspect the packinghouses and they might say that after you pack 600-100 bins you need to have a new treatment, but with ours you don't need to change it.

"The pools remain unaltered from when they come in from the warehouse."

He said supermarkets had a tendency to cut minimum residue limit (MRI) rules to margins such as half or a third, which meant growers needed to show consistency in their fruit residues.

Benito Orihuel

"If the MRI for fruit from a treatment broth is 400ppm and 200ppm the next, that’s a lot of variability," he said. "With our system it is more constant."

He said sales grew by 35% last year and had risen 8% this year to date, with the technology now a "point of reference" for the industry with around 300 clients in Spain alone.

The company has clients around the world but Orihuel said it was difficult to measure how many as the technology was sold by distributors in different countries. Its products can now be found throughout the Mediterranean, the Middle East, South Africa, Australia and some parts of South America.

Peru-based Agricola Hoja Redonda's Miguel Alayza de Losada, said Citrosol had helped his company greatly through regular consulting over treatments and processes, with flexible, straightforward and timely responses.

"The equipment and supplies we have received from Citrosol have continuously improved and have been a factor in the success we are continuing to have and in the recognition we have received from clients," he said.

South Africa-based citrus grower Schoeman Boerdery operations manager Christo de Jonge, growers can be certain their products comply with the latest European Union regulations due to Citrosol's timely responses.

"Citrosol and Schoeman Boerdery have a long relationship and we are very proud to be associated with them."

www.freshfruitportal.com