Pluckr wins Food Valley Award 2014

This year’s Food Valley Expo, which was celebrating its tenth anniversary, was themed ‘Silicon Valley meets Food Valley’. The expo provided a platform for the very latest agrifood technologies, showcases by innovative companies, the Food Valley Award ceremony, inspiring speakers, and supporting activities for the food business.

Aalt Dijkhuizen, figurehead of the Topsector Agri & Food, and Bert Roetert, chair of Food Valley NL, chose the occasion of Food Valley Expo to launch www.dutchfoodinnovations.com. A Food Valley NL initiative, this new website provides an overview of innovative technologies, products and ingredients relating to food and nutrition, food technology and agriculture.

Knowledge-sharing

The Netherlands has a wealth of agrifood knowledge and technology, enabling it to contribute to solving the world’s food challenges on a global scale. The new website gives R&D managers, policymakers and consultants a quick and easy overview of which innovative agrifood solutions are available in The Netherlands. Dutchfoodinnovations.com is a practical tool for sharing knowledge and establishing new interconnections. The database contains numerous innovative ingredients for food applications and also includes technologies which facilitate cleaner and more sustainable production methods. Furthermore, users can find solutions for increasing the yield of food crops or for reducing waste. Food Valley NL will continue to add more content to the database in the months ahead. Companies in the agrifood and horticultural sector are invited to submit their innovations via www.dutchfoodinnovations.com. This can be done free of charge until 1 January 2015.

Pluckr wins Food Valley Award

This year Food Valley NL bestowed its Food Valley Award for the tenth time. An independent jury of experts evaluated the entries based on their innovative nature, economic feasibility, originality and the degree of collaboration during development. The nominees in 2014 were: PaperFoam’s sustainable and insulated gift packaging for champagne, Pit-Foodconcepts’ chilled, pascalised (HPP) baby food, and the Pluckr (www.pluckr.nl), a machine which uses ultrasonic vibrations to separate grapes from their stems at high speed with little if any damage – and it was this patented technology which won the Food Valley Award 2014. The machine was developed by JFPT/foodlife in close collaboration with TOP.

Icing on the cake

“It’s truly fantastic to win this prize,” says Patrick Jansen from JFTP/Foodlife, “And it’s huge encouragement for us to carry on innovating. Taking new technology to market is very challenging, and winning the Food Valley Award will definitely help us in the future.” Wouter de Heij from TOP adds: “We’re tremendously proud of the results of our collaboration. Winning this award is the icing on the cake, and it demonstrates that innovative technology delivers solutions which can improve the profitability of the sector. We’re delighted that we can contribute to that.”

The technology

The new grape destemmer is a compact machine with between three and twelve heads, each of which comprise a stainless steel clamp and a vibration system. Depending on the number of heads, the Pluckr is capable of handling between 300 and 600 kilos of grapes per hour. In comparison, it is only possible to destem around 20 kilos per hour manually. What makes this machine unique is the use of an ultrasonic vibration technique combined with servo drive technology which moves both up and down and backwards and forwards. This causes the grapes to be shaken loose with a minimum of damage, unlike in existing systems in which the grapes are ‘massaged’ loose. Furthermore, the machine works well in combination with the new active modified atmosphere packaging (AMAP) technology. With AMAP, the grapes being packaged under carefully controlled conditions to extend their shelf life by around three to four weeks. This keeps the grapes fresh for longer and reduces waste. The Pluckr is already in use within various fruit processing facilities at home and abroad.

The jury report

The Food Valley Award jury expressed its appreciation of the carefully thought-out approach demonstrated in realising this innovation. The jury’s comments about the Pluckr: “We are impressed by how several innovations have been combined within this machine. The way in which JFPT/foodlife and TOP have collaborated intensively with researchers in order to incorporate new technologies into this machine is very special. We believe that the Pluckr has considerable market potential because of its broad range of applications. Automated grape destemming offers significant potential for fruit and vegetable-processing companies.” Another important reason behind the jury’s decision was the fact that the Pluckr’s underlying technology was patented.

www.foodvalley.nl