Whether it’s apples from New Zealand or bananas from Ecuador, produce often travels great distances to get to the consumer and loss due to spoilage or other problems along the supply chain is costly and wasteful. But Swiss scientists have come up with a new sensor that could help solve this issue.
The temperature sensing device created by Empa Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology looks and acts like a piece of fruit, down to its shape, size, surface texture, color, and internal composition. The self-powered wireless electronic sensor is surrounded by a solid shell made of polystyrene (a type of plastic), water, and carbohydrates that simulate the fruit’s flesh, according to Thijs Defraeye, a scientist at Empa who is leading the project. Traditional sensors used for this application usually only measure the air temperature in the freight container. To accurately gauge how produce is holding up, though, you need to know the fruit’s core temperature, as a warm inner can lead to spoilage.
The device can be tailor-made for the particular type of fruit, even down to a specific cultivar, like a Braeburn apple or a Kent mango, and it can be packed directly with the fresh produce while in storage or during shipping, says Defraeye. Once the shipment arrives at its destination, the data—things like what the fruits’ core temperature was over time—can be quickly analyzed to determine if there were any problems during the trip.
A fruit spy among mangoes. Empa
In the U.S., an average of 12 percent of fresh fruits and vegetables are lost before making it to the consumer. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, globally about 1.4 billion tons of food—a value of more than $1 trillion—are lost or wasted each year, about 30 percent of which happens post-harvest (that includes storage and shipping).
Defraeye believes there are a variety of different applications for the sensor all along the supply chain—from greenhouses and orchards, to cold storage and ripening facilities, to the transportation sector—by exporters, importers, wholesalers, and retailers alike.
“They will be able to better pinpoint the location and reason for unexpected quality loss, which is essential for quality claims,” Defraeye tells Modern Farmer in an email.
Initial field tests on the sensors are under way and the researchers are now looking for potential industrial partners to manufacture the devices, which they believe would cost less than $50 per unit.
| A ModernFarmer release || April 18, 2017 |||
Taby, Sweden – Successfully solving the problems of using vacuum technology to convey the delicacies of the food industry, such as nuts, seeds, beans, candy, as well as nutraceutical tablets and capsules, Piab’s piFLOW®t conveyor is dedicated to the gentle handling of delicate ingredients and products. Promising to revolutionize the automated handling of fragile goods, the piFLOW®t features innovative and groundbreaking new technology (patent pending).
“A controlled low speed, guided entry into the conveyor, and the elimination of all sharp edges are the keys to our success, ensuring that products are handled with great care in our conveyors. There will be no more chipped candy in plants using piFLOW®t,” states Jarno Tahvanainen, Vice President of Piab’s Material Handling division.
Suitable for transporting up to four million items per hour, the piFLOW®t conveyor can be used to transport any fragile goods within a processing plant. For the food industry this enables the safe handling of, for instance, coated sweets, candy, roasted coffee beans, whole nuts, and nutraceutical tablets.
Eliminating the use of inadequate standard equipment and alternative, often back-breaking, manual procedures, piFLOW®t will safely transfer ingredients and products between the various processing units, such as tablet presses, coating drums, and packaging lines, avoiding all risks of damage.
At the core of piFLOW®t is the proprietary piGENTLE™ an innovative technology (patent pending) that maintains a gentle flow by regulating the feed pressure of the pump, ensuring that fragile ingredients or products are handled as delicately as possible. piFLOW®t is an extension to Piab’s popular and high quality range of piFLOW® conveyors for powder and bulk materials, and is specially developed to meet the stringent demands regarding operational safety and hygiene within the food (piFLOW®f), pharmaceutical (piFLOW®p), and chemical (piFLOW®i) industries.
About Piab
Established in 1951, Piab designs innovative vacuum solutions that improve the energy-efficiency, productivity, and working environments of vacuum users around the world. As a reliable partner to many of the world's largest manufacturers, Piab develops and manufactures a complete line of vacuum pumps, vacuum accessories, vacuum conveyors and suction cups for a variety of automated material handling and factory automation processes. Piab utilizes COAX®, a completely new dimension in vacuum technology, in many of its original products and solutions. COAX® cartridges are smaller, more energy efficient and more reliable than conventional ejectors, and can be integrated directly into machinery. This allows for the design of a flexible, modular vacuum system. In 2016, Piab completed two strategically important acquisitions, Kenos and Vaculex. Piab is a worldwide organization with subsidiaries and distributors in almost 70 countries. Its headquarters are in Sweden.
| An Ins release for Piab who are represented in New Zealand \\ April 19, 2017 |||
Mountains of slag all over the world are a Kiwi company's idea of great riches.
The waste from mines is dumped into mounds so big that they can generate their own weather patterns -- but New Zealand company Avertana says they can each be worth half a billion dollars.
Avertana is a start-up company that has received a kickstart from a new fund set up by The Icehouse innovation hub and its investors ICE Angels.
The "Tuhua" fund has raised $10 million dollars to target 25 Kiwi start-up companies.
ICE Angels CEO Robbie Paul says the idea is to be a game changer.
Continue to read the full article on Newshub || April 18, 2017 |||
Reinforces New Zealand connections with doomed Atlantic Liner
New Zealand’s connection to the world’s most famous shipwreck the Titanic has become reinforced with the entry by Ocean Gate into the passenger tour business starting next year with scheduled dive tours to the wreck.
Ocean Gate is organised by Stockton Rush (pictured above) who is part of the family of the late Stockton Rush 11 who invented the high end terrestrial tourist business in New Zealand.
United States oilman Stockton Rush 11 developed Takaro Lodge in the South Island southern lakes district as a conservation and tourist centre for the rich.
The problem for the Lodge was that Mr Rush’s development coincided with the Labour government of Prime Ministers Norman Kirk and Wallace Rowling.
At this time the Labour government was anxious to be seen to be returning to its working class roots.
The publicity surrounding Takaro Lodge and especially its bathroom fittings which were said to be gold plated, along with the moneyed celebrities who stayed there meant that the Lodge became a target for government-inspired obstacles.
The current Stockton Rush is similarly in the premium tourist business, though this time of an undersea nature, and based in the United States.
Round dive costs have been calculated on an inflation adjusted formula relating to a first class trans-Atlantic berth on the Titanic itself (pictured below), this being in the region of NZ$150,000.
A qualified aerospace engineer and commercial pilot, Mr Rush is supervising the construction of his passenger dive craft known as Cyclops 2.
The Rush family’s tourist-based connection with New Zealand and the Titanic supplements the better known one of film magnate James Cameron and New Zealand.
It was Mr Cameron’s film, coincidentally financed by Rupert Murdoch, a continuing New Zealand omnipresence, that re-ignited the curiosity about the disaster and its causes and effects.
Subsequently New Zealand relatives have been discovered of Frederick Fleet the crows nest look out who first sounded the alarm about the imminence of the iceberg.
Mr Fleet later testified at the court of inquiry that the absence of any binoculars at his post meant that his warning came too late.
Meanwhile the Stockton Rush of Takaro Lodge fame an imposing-looking man who resembled the actor James Garner died at the age of 69 in 2000.
Mr Cameron with his numerous projects with New Zealander Peter Jackson resides in the Wairarapa Valley in which he has established a health foods grocery.
Lookout Frederick Fleet died in 1965.
| From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk || Tuesday 18 April 2017 |||