Miller Magazine Issue: 118 October 2019

23 NEWS MILLER / OCTOBER 2019 have been constant winners. They have such a high standard of skills and technology, and are leaders in being good employers, as well as producing such high quality products,” says John Barber, representative of Her Majesty The Queen. He handed the award to Bühler’s Timothy Kelf, Head of Sensor Development. “The fact that we have been so successful in a num- ber of different market segments with this technolo- gy shows the strength and depth of our capabilities in cutting-edge technologies,” says Kelf, who received the Queen’s Award together with Senior Research En- gineer Ben Deefholts. With their team, both have been instrumental in bringing this innovation to the market. The technology is currently being used by food pro- ducers in Europe and the United States. They report an increase in detection rates of foreign materials by 10%, from 85% to 95%. A single Sortex optical sorter can control up to 150,000 single grains or 15,000 peas per second with a capacity of 12 tons per hour, secur- ing highest food standards. WHAT CUSTOMERS SAY Bühler’s PolarVision uses the industry-leading camera technology for the frozen vegetable market. Its technology can detect even the most challenging foreign material in fro- zen vegetable production lines. Ardo, one of the world’s largest producers of fresh-frozen fruit, veg- etables and herbs, has in- troduced PolarVision in its European sorting plants. “In our experience, Po- larVision technology is one of the best digital-vi- sion technologies when it comes to detecting foreign materials in the industrial frozen vegetables process. It’s a jump forward”, said Steven Van Engelandt, Ar- do’s Group Project Engi- neer. While the technology has so far been applied to detect foreign materials, future developments will also be able to detect mycotoxins and even pathogens. The Bühler camera technology is also being used to detect lower-grade or discolored polymers to ensure the highest grade recyclate can be achieved by plastic recyclers. By detecting such high rates of contamina- tion, it is now possible to produce food-grade plastic packaging from 100% recycled material, cutting the need for virgin plastic production and levels of plastic being sent to landfill. HOW BÜHLER EARNED THE SEVENTH QUEEN’S AWARD One of the criteria for a Queen’s Award is that the technology should not just be innovative, but has to be scalable, commercially viable, and to have resulted in a material improvement to a commercial process. Since the introduction of the Sortex E optical sorter using BioVision technology, sales of Bühler sorting solutions into the nut sector have doubled. The technology is now being used by the world’s top nut producers glob- ally to detect blemished nuts along with the smallest shell fragments in walnuts, pecans and pistachios.