Is there room for another sorting machine manufacturer?

With some brilliant ideas Insort has conquered a significant share in the potato industry – and are now entering the nut and dried fruit business at full steam. To get noticed in the market they already solved some problems for almonds, walnuts and macadamias. We wanted to know the people who are driving this success. We talked to Matthias Jeindl, the CEO and visionary behind Insort sorting machines.

The nuts and dried fruit industry seems like an exclusive club with not many newcomers. This is why we have to ask the question on behalf of our readers: Who are you?

I am not a classical machine builder. I used to work in the fruit preparation industry. I founded my first company in 2006 dealing with aseptic fruit. In 2009 I met Peter Kerschaggl, who is the owner of EVK in Austria. EVK had developed a sensor system for the recycling industry. The system is able to distinguish different plastics – polyethylene, polypropylene – even if it has the same colour. I was fascinated by this sensor. I asked him if he was interested in doing something for the food industry. I am a food technologist and I was sure there is some potential.

We bought one of his camera systems and realized the first projects for the food industry. One of the first unsolved problems was the so-called ‘sugar end disorder’ for the potato

industry. [A serious defect in product quality is the physiological disorder known as sugar ends, also referred to as dark ends, jelly ends, translucent ends, and/or glassy ends. Symptoms of the most common type of sugar end include relatively low starch and high sugar content in the basal end of the tuber. Tubers with the sugar end disorder produce French fries that are dark on one end, making the fries unacceptable to consumers]. We could see this with our sensor before frying.

After selling the first machine to the potato industry Peter Kerschaggl and I founded ‘Insort’ to develop the potential of the technology for the food industry.

How does the sensor identify the sugar end?

The underlying technology is infrared spectroscopy. We are emitting light with a wide spectrum – halogenic light. The emitted photons are exciting the molecules, it is called overtone vibration. These vary in size according to the molecular structure. We measure the reflected light spectrum – in real time. With this spectrum we can define the molecular structure of the object.

Brix measurements already work like this.

Lab systems from manufacturers like Mettler Toledo and Foss offer an established process in labs. We are the first who use the hyperspectral imaging camera in the production line for real time analysis in food applications.

In what way did you use a different approach from other sorting manufacturers.

Our starting point is the chemical composition of food products, while sorting traditionally started with visible aspects like appearance, shape and colour. We started by looking at the invisible defects and foreign material similar in appearance to the good product.

Was it easy to enter a market that s eemed pretty much saturated?

It was difficult because the potato industry is owned by big companies and they did not like to work with smaller suppliers at the beginning. Today we have machines all over the world – and we are excelling on all benchmarks for foreign material as well.

What is different about your foreign material detection?

The machine does not have to ‘learn’ what is foreign material, we just need to

know about the good product - and every thing else is rejected. Our sensor detects 240 different signals per pixels – a standard system with RGB camera delivers only 3 signals (Red, Green, Blue = RGB). More signals mean more precision. We require quite a lot of processing power for this. To calculate and process this fast we had to overcome quite a few obstacles.

What is next after potatoes?

Our next target is the nuts and dried fruit industry. Since 2017 the first machines are installed and working at our clients’ processing lines. The results are overwhelming. We did not expect that our systems can outperform others very fast. The first clients who dared to experiment with a machine from a small Austrian supplier are our best sales representatives today. They just tell everybody about the performance of our system. And I personally like the industry – there is an atmosphere of professional collaboration.

Who are your first clients?

Our first client in california was Don Barton from Gold River Orchards for walnuts. We had to promise him in the contract that we will provide the best shell detection system available. We tested the system and we knew it was quite good. We had to promise 99,8% shell detection. But we also announced that we would make a test to detect rancid nuts, but we will only be able to tell him after installation. We needed more raw material to develop this detection. Within half a year the sorter was able to identify rancid walnuts.

At the same time the Spanish almond industry came to us and told us about their problems with bitter almonds. For the first time we could offer a solution for bitter almonds. Tabata in Japan bought a sorter because they wanted to identify embedded shell pieces in almonds. According to Tabata it was not possible before.

We developed a system with four cameras, quite expensive. But the company is very happy because it gives them a great advantage in Japan. Hughson Nuts has shown us a sample with 3-4% remaining shell material. We managed to set the system with 99,999% accuracy in one sorting run. We also got a request about the so-called ‘stone macadamia’, very hard macadamias in the harvest. We could immediately see a difference on our sensor.

You have been talking about the amazing performance. What are the downsides of your system?

Until now it is the price. The technology in our machines is more expensive, which leads to about 20% higher machine prices. Not all clients are suitable for high investments. But so far it is going very well, we grow 40-50% each year. We started to enter the Spanish market in September 2017 and we have sold 8 machines so far.

This is a very good start. The early adopters are happy and we will see how we can make progress. Others might be more advanced with colours. All companies who invest in sorting should invest in a new technology. And we always try to enter a market segment by doing something that others cannot do. Why should buy anybody from us if we do not outperform other solutions?