Sun City Cherries upgrades with Elifab grader
Sun City Cherries, Kelowna, British Columbia, recently added a cherry line and updated its packing facility.
The company added an Elifab Cherry Class grader, which improved cherry handling and grading with more cameras and camera angles to deliver a consistent and quality product, according to a news release. Elifab, an Ellips Group company, uses the company’s TrueVision technology to find internal and external defects, including softness.
“We require virtually no manual sorting as the Ellips’ TrueVision system is able to accurately detect all types of external defects and softness,” Gordie Sandhu, president of Sun City Cherries, said in the release. “The system’s ability to detect even the most difficult defects, such as nose cracks, has greatly improved the efficiency of our operation.”
This spring, the Ellips Group was busy in the Pacific Northwest, installing two blueberry lines, a cherry line, onion line and completing two apple projects in less than two months, according to the release.
Sandhu said that when his company considered its needs for a new cherry grader, priorities were placed on labor reduction, the ability to sort for quality and consistency according to customers’ demands, and a high throughput were important.
“We are able to achieve production that is 30% higher than on our previous system and our grading results are phenomenal,” he said in the release.
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