Eqraft enables a cleaner product

Featured article in Produce News about Food Safety

From reception to topping and from grading to packing, Eqraft takes food safety to the next level. Their machinery is designed and built with the highest food safety standards in mind every step of the way. Thanks to the machine builder’s smart technology, the products comes out better and cleaner.

Dutch tech company Eqraft designs and builds processing lines and factories for onions, potatoes and bulk products worldwide. Many of their clients are located in North America: from Target Ag in Othello (WA) and Torrey Farms in Elba (NY) to Northwest Onion in Brooks (OR). Eqraft has also designed and built the onion factory of the future, MSP Onions in the Netherlands, which boasts the world’s largest automated onion processing line, consisting of 12 lanes and an optical grading solution.

Eqraft’s machines and software enable agricultural factories to be efficient and reliable partners. For every step in the process, food safety is of utmost importance to Eqraft. For instance, their machine portfolio includes an onion topper, which was the first machine they developed in the 1980s and is still a big success among agricultural businesses all over the world. It separates dirt and foliage from the produce, so it can be passed on to the sorting line clean, preventing contamination.

Eqraft’s machine portfolio also includes weighing and packing machines, as well as the Eqrader, an electronic sorter that can sort the produce automatically and at high speed by quality, size, weight, shape and color, based on internal and external checks. It classifies the onions into a dozen different categories, grading them into separate boxes. The Eqrader makes sure any bad or rotten specimens are taken out of the batch. Thanks to the cameras and infrared technology, rot on the inside can be detected easily. This leads to a more reliable sorting quality than ever before: with manual sorting, it’s impossible to reach the same level. Being able to guarantee a cleaner product without any rot enables the agricultural entrepreneur to offer a high-quality product at a higher price-point, making them a more reliable partner for traders, retailers and food services.