Date Sorting, Grading, and Packing Lines
Why Date Sorting?
Dates are sweet delicate fruits native to the Middle East and tropical districts, but they can easily go bad if not handled properly. Their taste and freshness highly depend on several factors such as skin dryness, sugar content, color, shape, and size. As a result, they demand the optimal sorting systems to distinguish between the good and bad dates. Over the years, we have perfected our date processing lines to include innovative machinery and vision technology to help you achieve the most reliable and consistent quality inspection results.
Optical Sorting for Dates
Watch our machines in action
There are countless date varieties around the world including popular varieties like Barhi, Dayri, Halqoumi, and Medjool. Each date variety has its own distinguished characteristics and need dedicated, specialized systems to process them perfectly. Quadra has the experience and skills to provide you with cost-effective and highly efficient date sorting lines tailored to your specific dates. Our lines are built to meet the most stringent EU standards and include all stages of date processing from emptying, washing, and brushing to grading, sorting, and quality inspection, to packing, palletization, and pallet strapping.
Accurate
Reliable
Cost-Effective
Fast
EU Compliant
Remote Assistance
HIGH RESOLUTION CAMERAS
In optical sorting, accuracy and reliability are key differentiators. When it comes to dates specially, it is very difficult to achieve adequate sorting results without proper equipment due to their naturally rippled skin and irregular shape. Our engineers have perfected the optimal setup of polarized lighting and high resolution and infrared cameras to obtain the best imaging results. The high-speed cameras collect multiple images per second for each date as they rotate under the camera. Then, these images are analyzed by an intelligent AI system.
ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE REIMAGINED
Based on the images captured by the cameras, the AI software reconstructs each individual date and identifies its primary characteristics including its weight, length, diameter, volume, shades of color, loose skin, moisture content, and sugar content with minute accuracy. Our technology is self-learning, capable of recognizing new defects autonomously the more dates are processed into the sorting machine, thus making ours a powerful system whose accuracy improves over time.
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Gallery
Date Processing Steps
Dumping & Visual Inspection
The dates are emptied in bulk onto a special conveyor belt with overhead lights. During this step, the dates are visually inspected, and workers will remove rotten and crushed dates that are better off not being processed in the machine. Eliminating the bad dates is a crucial step as they are often very sticky and may cause sanitary issues along the remaining steps of the line when in large quantities.
Dry Brushing
The dates pass through a brushing machine that will carefully polish the surface of the fruits with a series of fine horsehair brushes specially accustomed for handling dates. This step is essential to remove any dust particles and sticky residues that may be present on the surface area of the dates. Moreover, the brushing machine serves as the primary cleaning station and prepares the dates for the next washing phase.
Cleaning
After being polished, the dates are transported under water spraying nozzles which rinse the products with water and sanitizing solution. Therefore, the dates are thoroughly cleaned and disinfected from any harmful substances and pathogens that may be present on the surface of the fruits. Now, they are perfectly safe to consume and are ready to be graded, sorted, packed, and shipped to the end clients.
Sorting & Grading
The dates are transported to the electronic grader using special roller cups which rotate them as they are photographed under the camera. The camera box includes a carefully engineered lighting and camera setup to achieve crisp imaging results. With the proper imaging techniques and an innovative vision software, it is possible to precisely characterize each date by:
• Length - accurate to +/- 0.1 mm
• Diameter - accurate to +/- 0.1 mm
• Volume - precise to the decimal
• Weight - calculated based on density and volume with a +/- 0.1 gram deviation
• Shape - detects irregularly shaped dates
• Color - to identify discoloration
• Moisture - to identify humidity and dates with dry skin
• External Quality - detects 5 categories of loose skin
AI Quality Inspection
Our intelligent vision technology immediately generates enhanced models of each product, allowing users to visualize and study the dates on a monitor. The system uses an intuitive recognition software that can perceive any defects present on the surface of the dates even if they are not apparent to the naked eye. The AI software can easily detect both minor and major defects including skin dryness, blisters, bruising, and 5 different categories of loose skin for date varieties like Medjool.
Collection
Once the dates are analyzed, they are graded to different exits based on user-defined parameters. As a result, uniform dates are collected in boxes, crates, or trays at the end of the line. Workers use a digital scale at each exit to weigh the exact amount of dates in each box before they are packed and ready to be shipped.
Packing
Lastly, the boxes filled with dates are wrapped with a protective film and pass through a thermo-shrinking tunnel. As a result, the dates are safely sealed from the surrounding environment, and the boxes can also be injected with modified atmosphere to preserve the freshness and sweet taste of the dates for longer periods of time.
Why Choose Quadra?
✓ More than 35 Years of Expertise in Dates:
Our advancements in technology, R&D, and engineering have led us to develop unparalleled sorting machinery for dates from feeding to packing.
✓ Newest Technology for Detecting Moisture and Dry Skin:
Our patented Ghibly date sorting technology is at the forefront of the industry and has achieved impeccable results in evaluating the moisture content in dates and detecting all sorts of defects like loose skin, bruises, blisters, and more.
✓ Robustness, Reliability, and Availability of Spare Parts:
Our date sorting machines are built to last for decades and need very little maintenance. Even the maintenance cost, when necessary, is relatively very low since our spare parts are common and readily available in the general market at a low cost.
✓ Flexibility in Sorting Parameters:
Our interactive software allows users to choose and modify sorting parameters at any instant for each exit without technical assistance.
✓ Remote Assistance:
Our machines are connected to the Internet through a secure network that allows our technicians to follow the operation of the machine and promptly manage it remotely. This allows us to significantly reduce their downtime and to continuously update our databases to reach exceptional degrees of reliability.