LINCOLNSHIRE-based Burgess Farms is seeing the benefits of a new potato wash line pay off, six months after its installation.
Burgess Farms has washed and packed its potatoes at Sutton Bridge for over 25 years. The first potato was packed at the Sutton Bridge site in 1964, when the Potato Marketing Board ‘Experimental Station’ was officially opened.
Today it is a major supplier of potatoes and other vegetables with an established organic heritage. Its potatoes are available in most pack sizes, formats and packaging materials, ranging from a 200g individual portion pack to a 25kg sack, and above.
Last year Burgess Farms decided to improve its product washing and product grading capabilities and began looking for viable options.
Engineering Manager David Booth said: “The senior management team were aware that the line could be significantly improved with investment in new technologies and were keen to take further advantage of optical sorting and grading. They asked me to specify a washing and packing line with a Newtec Celox at its centre.”
Installed in October last year by Haith Group, the new line has significantly increased Burgess Farms’ throughput and added further optical grading and sorting capabilities to the company’s Sutton Bridge site. David said the investment was ‘considerable’.
The new line starts with a RotaTip TE. The award-winning box tipper is fully electrically-powered and ejects the empty box upwards to reduce forklift movements.
Potatoes enter the system over a web which removes any loose soil from the crop before transferring it into a SupaFlume de-stoner. The crop is then washed through a semi-submerged barrel washer which features a fully rubber pintle lined barrel and floating debris removal system.
The potatoes are then dried by passing over a Direct-Drive Sponge Roller Dryer. Each roller is driven directly by a shaft mounted drive which significantly reduces maintenance costs compared to the traditional chain driven machines. Two pintle lined rubber infeed rollers aid dewatering & debris removal.
Once dried, a Newtec Celox P-DUAL-UHD Camera sorts the potatoes by size, shape, and quality, identifying fresh damage, black spot, dry cuts, grey damage, green and rot in a single-stage process. The Celox allows up to sixteen categories to be selected for grading and sorting and will feed four, eight or 12 lanes depending on capacity. In this setting, Burgess Farm asked for each lane installed to feature a Haith VertiFill Pro box filler and weigh platform scales with weight indicator.
Once commissioned, David oversaw the installation of CCTV along the line, allowing the single operator to see and control every element of the line from his workstation, even including the door on the washer.
