HEALTH & SAFETY
SORTEX F OPTICAL SORTERS
BUHLER
ARDO UPGRADES ITS PROCESSING PLANTS WITH
POLARVISION TECHNOLOGY TO CONTINUE
ENSURING FOOD SAFETY AND QUALITY
Quality and food safety are essential for
Ardo, one of the world’s largest fresh-frozen
fruit, vegetable and herb producers. That is
why they have invested in the latest SORTEX
F optical sorters from Bühler, featuring the
peerless SORTEX PolarVision foreign material
detection system. In addition they have
taken advantage of the PolarVision upgrade
kit and saved significant costs by retrofitting
the advanced technology into their existing
SORTEX E sorters.
Ardo has 21 state-of-the-art production,
packing and distribution sites in nine
countries, employing 3,800 employees. It is
a hugely successful business, turning over
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€1bn (US$1.13bn) a year, processing 860,000
tonnes of high-quality frozen fruit, vegetables
and herbs, which are sold to customers in
more than 100 countries.
To ensure high quality and ultra-freshness,
Ardo’s production facilities are located near
to fertile agricultural centres in Europe, close
to where its carefully selected network of
3,500 growers operate. This helps to ensure
that produce is as fresh as possible, while
food quality and safety also remains high,
because Ardo’s production sites are certified
to internationally recognised standards, while
complying with strict food safety and HACCP
standards.
“Food safety is hugely important – it’s
the cornerstone of our corporate strategy
– and we invest in the most advanced
technologies to help us to achieve this,”
says Steven Van Engelandt, Ardo’s Group
Project Engineer. “We’ve been using Bühler
sorting technology for many years and now
have their PolarVision technology on our
sorting lines around Europe. In our Belgium
production facility, for instance, we’ve just
finished upgrading our SORTEX Es with
PolarVision, as we needed to enhance our
ability to remove any kind of foreign material
(FM).”