From the heart of Romagna to the international stage of fruit and vegetables: UNITEC, an Italian excellence recognized in more than 65 countries, is getting ready to give answers to the most demanding and expert visitors present at Fruit Attraction with automation and artificial intelligence technological solutions dedicated to the fruit and vegetables sector.
In an increasingly competitive market hit by climate variables, UNITEC remains a point of reference for selection, sorting, handling and packing of fruit and vegetables, proposing technologies that can respond to significant challenges: ensuring high quality standards and supporting packing houses as regards labor shortage, but most of all we help to improve profitability and loyalty towards distribution channels and end clients.
The latest development: Vision 4.0 AI
UNITEC, a worldwide leader company, keeps being committed to innovation and development of new and efficient solutions for internal and external quality selection of every kind of fruit and vegetables. UNITEC installations equipped with UNIQ systems allow selecting internal quality, with high reliability, totally preserving the integrity of each fruit. A concrete answer to the market and final consumers’ expectations, who pay more and more attention to ripeness level, sweetness and integrity. One of the many pieces of technology of this edition will be Vision 4.0 AI, the latest evolution of UNITEC sorting platforms: a system boosted by artificial intelligence that allows detecting and separating external defects with a level of precision never reached before. The result: perfectly sorted fruit and vegetables, more consistency in standards, speed in processes and access to more profitable markets.
Angelo Benedetti’s vision
“Many technological solutions to support European and global packing houses with the concrete aim to be on their side. Nowadays to generate ‘results’ nature is not enough, we need technology too!” states Angelo Benedetti, President of UNITEC. “Only in this way can we ensure consistent quality levels that, providing satisfactory answers to consumers, will bring benefits to the entire chain”. The technologies we present in Madrid have a precise goal: promoting customer loyalty towards the fruit produced in Europe, especially in Spain and Italy.
We do not limit ourselves to handling, sorting/grading lines: we look at the total project, from the field to the final palletization. We are developing an intelligence able to directly connect the packing house to the country, providing useful information to improve quality selection already in the field. Therefore, AI will be used not only during the handling stage, but also during harvest, with a connection to the large-scale retail channel and oriented to complete satisfaction of final consumers. We aim at robotized harvesting solutions for apples, peaches, damson plums and kiwifruit, designed and built with a company culture that brings together innovation and concrete results for our customers
An integrated and sustainable chain
The real strength of UNITEC is not only technology, but also a vision of the chain: automated lines that follow the products from post-harvesting to packing with gentleness and rapidity, reducing waste, lowering costs and maximizing profitability of packing houses. “Automation is no longer an option, it is the concrete answer to the growing difficulty in finding labor” emphasizes Nour Abdrabbo, Sales Director of the Group. “Our solutions improve productivity and efficiency, producing value for the entire chain and ensuring continuity even towards climate uncertainty”. Each installation is “customized” in the Italian R&D center, with flexible solutions to face increasingly unpredictable productive seasons.
Italian roots, global vision
Today UNITEC counts more than 20 operational headquarters in the world and a network encompassing more than 65 countries. Constant support that does not limit itself to technical service, but that also becomes a real side-by-side relationship during all the handling process. In this way the company claim “We work for your results” comes to life in reality: producers who become more competitive, exporters who reach far markets, local companies that convert into global players.
Many new technologies in the internal quality selection systems, with systems using Artificial Intelligence, entirely built by the R&D department of the company and dedicated to specific fruit of the UNIQ range, presented at Fruit Attraction.
UNICAL 222 BLUEBERRY SAMPLING MACHINE
UNICAL 222 blueberries is available with a new design, in a single-lane version, as a sampling machine. It offers a preview of a product batch, it helps to check the average quality of the batch from different producers and, consequently, to determine how to handle the fruit.
UNI SMART PACKER – ROBOT FOR CLAMSHELL AND PUNNET PACKING
UNI ROBOTICS brand of UNITEC introduces an innovative solution for packing, a phase in which the use of
robotics is becoming increasingly common. Designed for clamshells and heat-sealed punnets, UNI SMART
PACKER ensures that the lid remains closed and minimizes the use of personnel in repetitive and labor
intensive tasks, while ensuring consistent production. This system combines efficiency and gentleness,
protecting the package during handling. Furthermore, its flexibility allows changing quickly between formats
and adapting to different sizes of clamshells and heat-sealed punnets.
UNI SMART TRAY FILLER
An automatic filler that allows packing different varieties of fruit, such as apples, peaches, nectarines, and
apples to be packaged in trays or in trays inside crates. The fruit is picked and placed in the package tray by
an innovative robot with a pick and place function, which can adjust the picking/placing coordinates based
on the size and format of the package being handled.
UNICAL 300 TECHNOLOGY with Plum Vision 4.0 AI
UNITEC has innovated again even in the solutions for sorting damson plums, with the Plum Vision 4.0 AI
system, that uses Artificial Intelligence models developed in-house, in order to sort with the utmost precision.
The system detects defects with more accuracy, besides shape, size and color.
