The Nedato is a cooperative of 500 farmers, which has been producing quality potatoes to customers across the world for over 50 year. Recently the company chose to implement a sorting solution from TOMRA company and they shared their experience.
Today, Nedato is a large sales and packaging organization that annually sells 250,000 tons of potatoes to the processing industry in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, and packs about 100,000 tons in different packages for the home-market and for export.
Nedato is an innovative organization and this is reflected in the deployment of the latest technologies. Heero Gramsma, managing director at Nedato, explains: “We are continuously looking into improving the quality of our potatoes and recently felt the time was right to invest in innovative technologies to update our existing grading lines. It’s a quite simple story. TOMRA Sorting Food is a very well-known brand to French fries producers. We had heard that the company was able to successfully sort out clods, with barely any good product loss, which is something we know that the competition is unable to do – it was this capability that caught our attention”.
Gramsa mentioned that when they were given the opportunity to make a visit to potato processor, Hof Trumann, in Germany, who has recently installed a TOMRA Halo sorting machine, they didn’t hesitate.
“After seeing all the impressive technology in action, we immediately knew that we had to update our own processing lines. We explained our requirements to the TOMRA team and it soon became clear that TOMRA’s Field Potato Sorter2400 (FPS) was the right sorting machine for us,” the managing director of Nedato said.
A company’s reputation is essential
Gramsa explains: “The removal of foreign materials such as clods, stones, metal and other sharp objects is extremely important to us, not only for improving our yield, but also for minimizing the mechanical damage to our delicate potato tubers. Everything not classed as a potato product can damage its quality, which is why clods and foreign material must be removed from the processing line as soon as possible. A company’s reputation is essential, so everything must be perfect, especially when the end user is the consumer”.
The manager director of Nedato mentions that as well as producing a much cleaner potato product, the potato handling has also become smoother as the drops and drop heights have all improved by applying smaller diameter drive rollers for the conveyors. In addition, the potato miles are kept to an absolute minimum.
Nedato mainly exports to the European Union and the Middle East. Annually, Nedato supplies 400,000 tons of potatoes to retail, hospitality, food service companies and wholesalers as well as packing and processing, with 250,000 tons going directly into the French fries industry.
Nedato’s offering is extensive as it exports a variety of different potatoes including white and red, potatoes with yellow flesh color, waxy or floury, unwashed, virtually free of soil or totally washed, large or small.
As for service and support, Gramsa said Nedato has a maintenance contract with TOMRA Sorting Food, so that an FPS expert stops by at regular intervals to optimize its processing lines.
He continues: “TOMRA’s service team has provided us with special training courses so that we have been quickly brought up to speed to operate the FPS ourselves.
The FPS has proven that it can handle really high capacities of potatoes, without any problems. Even up to quite high levels of foreign materials, the machine works as promised, Heero Gramsma, added.
