OCTOBER 2024 ONION BUSINESS OF THE MONTH
Eqraft revolutionizes agricultural processing with cutting-edge automation. Their flagship the Eqrader, along with their other high-tech solutions, empowers agri-businesses to achieve efficiency and precision in cleaning, grading, and logistics. With a growing presence in North America, the Dutch tech company is setting a new standard for automation in the industry.
‘For agricultural businesses, automation is the way forward. Take optical grading: this is no longer a nice plus, it’s the only way to stay ahead of competition,’ says Rutger Keurhorst, Commercial Manager at Eqraft, a Dutch tech company and builder of ‘Agrifactories of the Future’. They design, build, and maintain smart factories that enable agri entrepreneurs to develop efficient and reliable businesses. Their portfolio includes machines for the whole process, from reception, cleaning, and grading to packing and internal logistics. Their flagship? The Eqrader, is a fully automated grader that sorts onions and other agricultural produce at high speed by quality, size, weight, shape and color. It performs both internal and external checks with the help of cameras, infrared technology, and artificial intelligence.
Eqraft started out as a machine builder in the eighties. From Flevoland, a province in the north of the Netherlands known as one of the country’s main hubs for agricultural businesses, they worked as a repair and construction business for agricultural equipment. Later on, the Dutch tech company started developing their own machines, with the closed onion topper as their first success. This machine is still an important part of Eqraft’s portfolio: it removes foliage and roots from the onion in a clean and safe manner, using rotating knives, while also removing loose skins and dirt, preventing the produce from contaminating the rest of the process further down the line. Later on, an onion shaver was developed as well: this machine removes even more of the foliage remnants and prepares the onion for luxurious packaging. The introduction of these machines was only the start: now, Eqraft operates as a comprehensive supplier for agri factories, serving clients across the globe and with a strong presence in the United States.
Automatic, high-quality sorting
After the onions are topped and cleaned – and, if needed, pre-graded with the help of a beltsizer that sorts out onions that are too small – they’re passed on to Eqraft’s most high-tech machine: the Eqrader. This solution can automatically sort onions in dozens of pre-determined quality categories. Six photos are taken of every onion while infrared technology checks the internal quality as well, accurately filtering out any onions with rot on the inside. ‘It’s impossible to reach this type of accuracy with manual sorting,’ says Keurhorst. ‘Moreover, the Eqrader doesn’t just improve the reliability of sorting, but also allows the factory to sort the produce to fit exactly with their clients’ needs: from coloring to firmness and from size to weight, they can select exactly which type of onion they want.’
Many future-forward North-American agribusinesses have already opted for the Eqrader, for instance, Big O Farms (NY), Northwest Onion (OR), Blue Sky Onions (WA) and Nova Agri (Nova Scotia, Canada). They notice their clients take the fact they electronically sort their onions as a quality guarantee: it doesn’t just help them serve their existing customers better, but also enables them to appeal to a new, larger client base.
Complete factory automation
After being sorted into different categories by the Eqrader, the onions can be passed on to Eqraft’s binfiller to be deposited in bins or boxes. This machine can be equipped with several gentle handling options to ensure the produce is handled with care: for instance, the vertical binfiller fills the bin up vertically instead of dropping the product to avoid damaging the onions. Next, the onions can either go to storage or move on to the weighing and packing process. Traditionally, this part of the process is done by forklifts, but these can be error-prone and even create unsafe working conditions. That’s why Eqraft also offers fully automated bin handling. Their solutions include roller tracks, stackers, destackers, turntables, shuttles, filling stations and crossings. They’re designed with sturdy materials and use electronic and pneumatic technology, avoiding hydraulics to ensure food safety. Several US-based clients have already implemented these automated logistics solutions in their processes, taking the next step towards building a fully automated agri factory.
Contact Eqraft
Mr. Rutger Keurhorst
Call: +31 527 256 130
Email: info@eqraft.com
Website: https://www.eqraft.com
