Sorting onions brings tears of joy to automation company

By Yoke Har Lee

New Zealand-designed onion-sorting machines are revolutionising the way United States onion packers run their operations.

Based on a machine developed to sort apples and weigh kiwifruit, the onion-sorter built by Onehunga-based Compac Automation - formerly Horticultural Automation - automatically scans, weighs and grades onions.

Founder Hamish Kennedy says the company has just installed five machines, worth more than $2 million, for US growers and packers.

The largest is capable of sorting 100 onions a second. Based on video, weighing and scanning technology, the machines have added a new level of technology to the onion industry.

Mr Kennedy started the business 15 years ago fresh from university after graduating with a masters degree in electrical engineering.

The kiwifruit boom gave him a start with his specialist weighing machines. Compac Automation now employs around 100 people, almost 80 per cent of its machines are sold overseas and annual turnover exceeds $10 million.

Mr Kennedy says growth is expected to double in the next few years as development work expands the range of products able to be sorted. Expansion into the shellfish and the timber industries is already under way.

Early this year, a Compac Automation sorting machine helped to salvage a frost-ravaged orange crop from Golden Valley Citrus in California. The client paid to have a 10-tonne machine flown to the US on a Boeing 747.

Although there are many weighing and sorting machines on the world market, the New Zealand design is the only one able to grade oranges after a crop has been hit by frostbite.

The machine measures the density of the fruit and a computer program decides if it is of an acceptable standard.

The company has also scored a major coup, clinching contracts to replace a US and a Danish apple-sorting machine in Washington with "Kiwi brains."

Mr Kennedy says Compac Automation replaced the multimillion-dollar machines with New Zealand-developed computer systems and software. "The Americans saw the money they could save by sorting the fruit more accurately."

Ongoing research keeps the company ahead of competition.

Next year, after nearly three years of development work, it will introduce a blemish-grading machine.

Trials will be carried out in New Zealand apple packhouses.

General manager David Buys says the machine is already attracting keen interest on both sides of the Tasman. "We've held off going to market any earlier as we wanted to be certain the technology would perform to the same high standards as our existing colour-grading and weight-sizing equipment," he says.

"Our customers have been asking for help with blemish grading and we felt it was a logical extension of our existing technology.

"However, we understand the importance of accuracy when looking at external blemishes such as limb rub, wind scar, insect damage and hail marks, and we have spent a great deal of time making sure we've ironed out all the potential problems."

The blemish grader will allow packhouses to significantly cut grading labour costs and, equally important, provide consistency in grading accuracy.

Mr Kennedy says building relationships with crown research institutes such as Industrial Research and HortResearch is a formula that has worked well for the company.

The New Zealand market offers little potential for growth. "To grow we need to export, and currently 75 to 80 per cent of our machines are produced for the export market."

He says attending trade shows is one of the most effective ways to see what others in the industry are offering. Beyond that, targeted advertising and word of mouth work best.