Last years they have brought significant growth in the popularity of automated lines for packing and sorting fruits and vegetables. The first reason behind that is growing labour costs and a lack of staff eager to handle tough jobs in the agricultural sector. In the XXI century, people tend to avoid repetitive, outdoor, seasonal jobs requiring some stamina, determination and scrupulosity. Even growing minimal wages cannot change this trend. Money attracts fewer migrants than in previous years. Many growers and farmers complain that they face serious problems with hiring trustworthy and motivated persons. The second thing is automation accessibility on the market. The fact is, nowadays, reliable machinery can easily replace the labour force in packing, sorting or even harvesting. The surging quality of machines, IT, and automation made investors more open to technology than ever before. The question is, how machinery can reduce overweight in blueberry packing?
While some machines show great functionality, durability, and ergonomics, others might struggle with boosting your business’ performance. There is various equipment available on the market, thus picking suitable machinery, adjusted to your real needs, might be tricky for someone without professional experience in the automation field. The machinery you want to invest in must deliver great flexibility, repetitiveness, speed of packing, strength and, above all, weighing accuracy. In the blueberry sector precision seems to be a focal point in the discussion about return on investment and automation profitability. Let’s explore why this aspect should be paramount for all growers and packing companies who deal with large volumes of fruits (at least hundreds of tons per season).
The overweight occurs when a machine or manual worker puts too much fruit in a punnet. In this case, “too much” means even 1 gram over the nominal weight of a punnet. Usually, you cannot shun these extra grams because of the blueberries’ specificity. Let’s use an example of packing 300-gram punnets. If the scale shows 299 grams, you have to add at least a single fruit to avoid underweight. It can cause customers’ complaints and return demands – you should do your best to stay away from those situations. That is why a weight & fill machine or staff member needs to add one extra blueberry to the punnet. The problem is, that the single fruit weighs, let’s say, 3 grams instead of exactly 1 gram. As a result, the punnet has 302 grams, and it’s 2 grams overweight.
Talking about several grams might sound a bit silly, but it makes sense when you take a helicopter view perspective. The overweight reduces the number of punnets you can make out of one ton of fruits. Fewer punnets sold means less income, and you still paid for (picked) one ton of blueberries. Results? Costs stay at the same level while incomes drop. By accepting overweight you giveaway fruits for free or – in other words – waste money you could earn. To be more precise, the amount of money you lose is correlated with the number of tons you process each year.
These losses are measurable and they are counted in tens of thousands of Euro annually for organisations which process over 200 tons of blueberry. In order to understand the real scale of the problem, please download the calculation below. This analysis presents how much money you lose because of working with an inaccurate weigh & fill machine for blueberries. It delivers concrete numbers and presents the difference between working with various machinery, featuring 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 grams of overweight. According to the findings, each gram of overweight counts. Download this document, which is free of charge, and find out how much blueberry overweight costs your business.
All those who downloaded the files, already found out the amounts of money behind the overweight issue. Using the examples given in the calculation, you probably can estimate how much money you waste per year because of overweighting.
The awareness of overweight losses is important, but is not enough to tackle the issue. You need to act wisely and embrace yourself with technology. The top-end packing equipment allows you to significantly reduce kilos of giveaway blueberries and thus earn more money. The best linear weigh & fill machines available on the market show barely 2 grams of fault per punnet. What is even more important, they do not lower their accuracy while speeding up packing, are able to process different types of fresh and frozen fruits, as well as work with a vast range of packaging. Apart from precision and speed of packing, the top-notched machinery features a hygienic design (cuts time needed for daily washing procedure), compatibility with different devices (fits in with your existing equipment), ergonomic and sturdy construction (safe and operator-friendly infrastructure, enabling quick and tool-less changeovers).
True is, the world-class blueberry machines cost more than inaccurate devices, however, the money you earn thanks to reducing overweight problems will return the cost of investment really quickly. Depending on your annual volume of fruits, the ROI time differs. These periods are confirmed by blueberry growers and packing companies who already decided to work with top-accurate weigh & fill machines. Join them and stop wasting your money due to a compromised device. Level up production efficiency and let superb technology make your business more profitable.
Milbor PMC features 10+ years of experience in the blueberry sector. Cooperating with the biggest packing companies and blueberry growers in Europe and Morocco, we perfectly understand the importance of keeping the overweight issue under control, and we can offer you tried and tested solutions – top-end packing machinery adjusted to your needs. If you are interested in making more money in the blueberry business, fill out the form below and our specialist will contact you to discuss your expectations.
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