Growers and packers face many challenges when it comes to potato grading. In most cases, this job requires many people responsible for manually evaluating the quality of the product to meet the client’s standards. Based on this process, grading and sorting are often the limiting factors for increasing yield. Also, if there are internal quality issues, manual sorters cannot determine if there are internal defects. So far, there is no clear solution.
There are the 5 biggest challenges of potato grading :
- Assess Internal Quality
- Infection of good products
- Efficient handling and grading of different shapes and sizes
- Improve potato sorting capacity
- There is a shortage of good employees
Five Challenges Facing Potato Grading
1. Assess Intrinsic Qualities
When grading potatoes, you can categorize the product according to its external qualities (i.e. size, color and weight). But the quality of the outside of the potato does not necessarily guarantee the quality of the entire product.
While the exterior of the potato may meet all the quality standards your customers expect, the interior quality may leave a lot to be desired. Potatoes can be affected by various internal diseases or defects, such as spots, glazes, hollows. In order to guarantee the required quality, it is very important to carry out an external and internal evaluation of the product.
2. Infection of premium products
The second challenge of potato grading is similar to the previous one in that there are at least two reasons for inspecting potatoes for internal defects:
Product quality should meet customer requirements
Good product to avoid infection
Removing potatoes with early defects
So you can choose which features and defects to evaluate. When potatoes with certain defects can be removed from your product, you will protect the product that will be delivered to your customers.
This will help maximize your returns by avoiding rejections while ensuring your product meets the quality and consistency your customers demand. This means less food waste and increased harvest value.
3. Efficient handling and grading of different shapes and sizes
A third challenge associated with effectively grading potatoes involves the ability to handle different varieties of different sizes and shapes. This feature enables you to provide customers with consistent packaging without the need to manually grade and sort potatoes. In addition, fewer products are incorrectly rejected, which helps ensure maximum returns from the harvest, while delivering exactly what customers want.
4. Improve potato sorting capacity
You must be able to grade more potatoes in less time, with less labor, and with better quality and consistency.
Potato quality is declining in some parts of the world due to the increased frequency of severe/challenging weather conditions and stricter regulations on pesticide use. As a result, processing power is reduced and more employees are required for grading.
Choosing a high-quality potato sorting machine not only increases productivity but also reduces production costs.
5. Shortage of talented employees and lower labor costs
It is also evident that the capacity is much higher than other potato sorting equipment (regardless of batch quality) due to the sorting speed of the machine, not to mention the manpower.
In addition to these advantages, it is also difficult to find (and retain) good employees these days. Automating the sorting process is a great way to solve this problem.
In short, by enhancing your existing packaging operations with more efficient and accurate potato grading and sorting technology, you’ll save a lot of money while accurately meeting your customers’ needs. Make every potato count.
About Potato Grading Machine
The potato grading machine provided by our company can help customers reduce costs and improve production efficiency. The sorting machine can be customized according to the specific needs of customers. If you need a potato grader, you can leave a message.