Miller Magazine Issue: 119 November 2019

66 TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM MILLER / NOVEMBER 2019 What is the effect of the drying procedure conduct- ed via your machine on the quality of the pistachio? Aflatoxin usually starts to emerge before harvest. If drying procedure gets delayed and if the critical con- ditions for mold production such as humidity, heat etc. breached during storage, contamination emerges after harvesting. The highest risk group for aflatoxin con- tamination is food commodities of corn, pistachio and greasy seeds. Thanks to our machine, 3 day-long dry- ing procedure is decreased to only 1 hour and produc- tion of aflatoxin is stopped. How many tons of product can be dried per hour? Capacity for each model varies from 1.5 to 5 tons per hour. Therefore, 36-120 tons of product can be dried per day based on the model. When comparing to previous methods, what kinds of advantages doee your technological method has? Any product without aflatoxin always gets higher de- mand and finds costumers at top prices. The spreaded product in the field is a serious threat in terms of hi- ygene. With the lowest-capacity machine drys 36 tons a day and it gives us the chance to dry 108 tons of product in 3 days. In the current system, 44185 m2 wide concrete space is needed for drying 36 tons of product. With its current market value, this concrete field has 1.423.000 TL cost. While the cost of our machine is 467.000 TL. Its energy consumption is 23kW, fuel consumption is 78 TL per ton. Are there some priority regions that you see as a target market and focus on? Thanks to this machine, we arranged a meeting for Turkish and Chinese exporters and prompted a Chinese company to investment in Nizip, Gaziantep. Besides, we have already contacted many vendors across the globe in order to promote the sales. In particularly, we are in touch with producers in USA, Iran, Spain, India, Greece and the countries on the coast of the Mediterra- nean Sea where pistachio market is leading. What are you doing to widen the usage of your product? Our main focal point is providing healthy products to consumers. The first condition for this is reducing the amount of excess water in the harvested products and preventing the formation of harmful bacteria and fungi. Therefore, it is more reasonable to store the products after drying process. Is there anything else you would like to communicate to our readers? The conditions re- quired for the healthy storage of agricultural products are provided by drying machines. This is the key provi- sion for achieving a bal- ance in terms of earn- ings and health. Dried products by primitive techniques are a se- rious threat to human health and economy. The method of making money within the sec- tor is providing healthy and homogenous dry- ing techniques. We do not imagine, we do!