Dec 30, 2011

New sizer, other equipment working for Hess Brothers

In July 2010, Hess Brothers Fruit Co. installed a new sizer, drying tunnel, grading table and automatic carton accumulation, handling and palletizing system. It was not a small investment.

Brothers Fred and Jerry Hess own and operate the Leola, Pa.-based apple packing business. In light of the economic climate, the timing of the equipment purchases was not without risk, but the Hess brothers chose to look on the bright side.

“We ultimately made our decision because we think the apple industry is growing,” Fred said. “Partly because people are being much more health-conscious, but an even bigger factor is the continuing upward trend in global consumption. A lot of other countries are growing very rapidly, and fortunately they’re developing big appetites for apples.”

Between their Leola packinghouse and a second facility in Alton, N.Y., the Hess brothers expect to pack about 1.7 million cartons of apples this year.

“Our strategy is to have fruit throughout the year, which makes for a more orderly marketing program,” Fred said. “If you try to push too much fruit out all at once, you just depress the market and lower the price.”

Hess Brothers’ network of 80-plus growers is primarily located within a 300- to 400-mile radius of Leola and Alton, within easy shipping distance of a huge percentage of the U.S. population.

“We’ve got the East Coast covered, but we also try to take advantage of local opportunities,” Fred said. “As people become more health-conscious, local is perceived as better.

“We’re very focused on food safety issues. All of our growers are already following the stringent rules, guidelines, and safety regulations spelled out in the Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) protocols. Getting all of the paperwork documented is the hard part. And then waiting for your official audit and certification. Most of our grower-partners will be GAP-certified by the 2011 season. Bottom line, if these guys weren’t doing the right things, Hess Brothers wouldn’t have a relationship with them. ”

New sizer

When the Hess brothers decided to replace their old sizer, they knew they wanted the best sorting technology available.

“We looked at a lot of machines, but in the end it was Greefa’s internal sorting package that sold us on the GeoSort III,” Fred said. “We do a lot of Honeycrisps, and sometimes they can have internal problems. So I thought if we were going to continue to grow, package and market that apple, it would be good to be able to take a look at the inside.

“Greefa’s proprietary Intelligent Flavor Analyzer (IFA) determines internal quality by measuring brix value, internal brownness and core rot. To give it a test, we played with it on some Golden Delicious apples, and it was amazing how it sorted those apples according to their different brix levels. We have a six-lane machine, and had the IFA installed on four lanes. It’s a component, so we knew we could add it to our other two lanes at any time.”

He said they’ve used it much more than he thought they would.

The other key selling point for Hess was Greefa’s external defect sorting capability. It utilizes both infrared and digital color cameras and a sophisticated software program to sort for external quality.

Hess Brothers’ GeoSort III can sort by size, color, weight, external quality, internal quality and shape.

“We’re still doing weight sizing, but can do optical sizing if we want to,” Fred said. “It’s just a matter of programming.”

In addition to being extremely fast – eight pieces of fruit per second – all of the Greefa equipment is user-friendly and gentle when it comes to handling. For example, they’ve added small curtain-like flaps to their cups, so when an individual apple drops, that little curtain softens the descent and landing, a real benefit when you’re running at high speeds.

The entire GeoSort III installation took three weeks.

“I think we shut down on July 16 of last year, and three weeks later we were running fruit,” Fred said. “At most, it took us about a half a day to get whatever little wrinkles there were in the system ironed out.”

The installation was a team effort between Durand-Wayland, Greefa, and Hess Brothers. The sizer arrived before the Greefa technicians got to Leola, so working with the Durand-Wayland folks, Fred got the sizer in place and fit all of the component sections together.

“Basically, everything was already in line when the Greefa techs got here,” he said. “But I told them that they needed to make sure that everything was squared-up and straight. I wanted them to check very carefully to make sure everything met their standards. I didn’t want them to come back and say we hadn’t set it up right.”

Fred is happy with Greefa’s support.

“On a daily basis, when you’re making little changes, sometimes you come across an internal problem that you weren’t seeing before,” he said. “No big deal. We run some sample fruit and send the pictures along to Greefa. By the next day, and often sooner, Greefa sends us a new program for that particular problem with that particular fruit.”

Other equipment

Hess Brothers also has a new automatic palletizing system that Durand-Wayland designed, Fred said. Durand-Wayland also supplied the conveyors and the electronics.

“We’ve almost entirely eliminated all lifting in our plant,” Fred said of the new system. “That’s huge in the fall when you’re running flat out from six in the morning until 11 o’clock at night.”

That same July 2010, the Hess brothers also installed a new single-lane DW sizer that they’re using as a bagging machine. They feed it from the GeoSort, and it has a total of 12 drops.

“We can program it to weigh out five-pound bags for six of the drops, three-pound bags for the remaining six drops, or program all 12 drops for five-pound bags,” Fred said. “We can configure it for whatever we need to run.

“It’s pretty straightforward; while one bag is filling, there’s plenty of time to remove and box a full bag. One operator can handle two drops fairly comfortably.”

A replacement drying tunnel from DW was also part of the deal. And a new grading table.

“Historically, you’d have a bunch of people involved with grading apples at this stage, but with the new Greefa technology we’re not doing any hand sorting. The machine does the hand sorting.”

By Sam Williams, Mid-Atlantic Correspondent