UNITEC towards the historic result in the region of Romagna

UNITEC celebrates the installation of the 1000th quality selection lane of the Italian sorting lines installed since the opening of its business in 1924.

This goal is not only symbolic, it testifies to the history, to the passion for research and to the calling for innovation that have always distinguished the company from the region of Romagna and that have allowed it to reach an absolute relevance in fruit and vegetable sorting worldwide. Nevertheless, the company remained faithful to the values of the territory from which it was born, first and foremost proactive service, attention to the customer and to its needs in connection with market demands.

As a matter of fact, just recently, as part of the last installation at APOFRUIT in Pievesestina, UNITEC technicians have placed the thousandth sorting lane in Italy since the founding of the company, a result that goes to enrich the numerous long-standing national and international relationships.

With this important achievement UNITEC arrives in Rimini as Technical Partner and sponsor of the International Cherry Symposium, presenting its patented systems, all entirely designed and developed in- house, for selecting the internal and external quality of cherries, so as to be able to guarantee the standards required by the destination market.

Thanks to the patented sorting systems dedicated to over 45 types of fruits, 100% made in UNITEC – in the Lugo headquarter, in Emilia Romagna – customers, located in over 65 countries across the 5 continents, can sort every year a number of fruits difficult to even imagine. Thanks to the 6.500 sorting lines installed so far, more than 350 billion fruits are sorted – this is equivalent to about 40 fruits per person in the world – thus selecting internal and external quality in order to pack fruits that are similar in terms of organoleptic characteristics and shelf life to satisfy market demands. An achievement made possible by many small steps taken over many years at the service of many companies of all sizes and characteristics worldwide.

As a matter of fact, thanks to Cherry Vision, Cherry Vision 3.0 and UNIQ Cherry, more than 27 billion cherries are selected, thus allowing to place on the market more than 1 million tons of product with qualities consistently divided according to the distances and the peculiarities of the destination markets.

UNITEC continues to collect inspiration from the market to design new innovative solutions. It is precisely to respond to the needs of packing houses worldwide that UNITEC has developed the UNI Robotics division, specialized in intelligent robotic solutions, allowing users to reduce fixed costs and optimize labor through the use of anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic robots, which are able to ensure a significant increase in efficiency, precision and delicacy in handling fruit and its packaging.

But that is not all, robotic solutions guarantee a greater fluidity of activities, they work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and reduce, almost eliminate, the errors that could result from exhausting, alienating and repetitive jobs, which represent the main problems linked to manpower today, thus allowing a greater efficiency and performance of the operations.

Last but not least, correct selection of fruits does not only bring benefits in financial terms for producers and distributors, but also satisfaction to the consumer. With UNITEC solutions, packing houses can reduce waste at the origin and give a second life to fruits that are not suitable for the fresh market, on average about 12% of processed fruit of the over 45 species for which UNITEC manufactures sorting lines. This is about 1 million tons of products not suitable for the fresh market per year, which – to give a more tangible idea – corresponds to the food waste produced in Italy in one year, which would otherwise end up in landfills, as estimated by the Waste Watcher International Observatory.