(Key Technology: Walla Walla, WA) -- Mariani has led the dried fruit industry for 115 years by focusing on product quality along with production efficiency. Last year, the company decided to integrate grading and sorting on one prune-processing line at its Marysville, California, facility and began searching for the ideal sorter for this application. Mariani selected a state-of-the-art VERYX optical sorter from Key Technology to find and remove all kinds of foreign material (FM) and the right amount of product defects to make grade while maximizing yield.

“We needed a new sorter to replace a 12-year-old stand-alone sorter that required us to size-grade prunes before sorting; it was an inefficient process, to say the least,” says Andrew Kennedy, director of grower relations at Mariani. “We talked with several suppliers and decided to go with Key Technology. VERYX gives us more advanced sorting capabilities as well as a higher throughput in a smaller footprint.”

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