Angelo Benedetti, President and General Director of UNITEC Group.

On February 9, UNITEC held a press conference led by Angelo Benedetti, President and General Director of UNITEC Group at Fruit Logistica. The agenda was to discuss the groundbreaking research and innovation that UNITEC is carrying out. The company designs and manufactures innovative solutions: lines, installations, and machines for sorting fresh fruits and vegetables.

Angelo discussed the work that UNITEC is carrying out in the field of robotics. He emphasized UNITEC’s focus on developing technology based on assessing the internal quality of fruit, stressing the importance of such procedures to instill trust in customers for the produce they buy.

He went on to emphasize that assessing the internal quality of fruit is imperative to send high-quality produce to markets and to improve the quality of the fruit that customers consume.

Through UNITEC’s technology, the internal quality of apples, plums, kiwis, pears, and pomegranates can be checked with high precision; soft blueberries can be detected and removed by virtue of the Blueberry Vision 3. Additionally, owing to UNITEC’s technology, it is possible to ensure that only green kiwis are sent to the market and none of the ones that are sent are yellow. Moreover, levels of sugar and ripeness of the fruit can be detected.

Angelo broached the topic of trust several times, claiming that trust is missing in customers and emphasizing that he wants to make sure that customers trust what they are buying. 

The company has also focused its attention on sorting dried fruit and precise quality detection for dried fruits is becoming a priority. With the Hazelnut Vision system for instance, UNITEC has created an effective answer to the need to select the external quality of both raw shelled hazelnuts and roasted hazelnuts, detecting typical defects such as bugged and rotten, and shape defects (oblong, double), and also select shelled hazelnuts.

Angelo mentioned how the company had installed a huge packing line for the processing of onions. Thanks to Onions Sort 3 and UNIQ Onions, sorting can be done according to different sizes and characteristics of the produce. The company also came up with a packing solution for dates. The Dates Sort 3 system is able to inspect 100% of the surface of each date to guarantee maximum reliability and precision.

UNITEC’s projects are also focused on harvests. One of their new projects is motorized harvesting by virtue of which harvestable produce can be selected and detected automatically. The technology facilitates the harvester to identify what to collect and whether the fruit is ripe enough to be harvested.

Owing to UNITEC’s cutting-edge technology, produce can be sorted based on the destination it is to be sent out to, be it destined for processing or the markets. This leads to space optimization in warehouses and helps slash energy costs. 

UNITEC lines equipped with the UNIQ Cherry system can select the internal quality of cherries with high reliability, thus safeguarding the integrity of the fruit. This innovation has made a significant contribution to exports since it serves to make sure that products can be exported especially when not in season to a wide range of markets.