Postharvest Automation
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Labor continues to be one of the biggest challenges for farmers, but the problems don’t end at harvest. Wootzano is a company that founder Atif Syed says makes highly dexterous robots to help in the packing houses of fruits like tomatoes and table grapes.
Syed… “ What started off as a, as a unique electronic skin, which will change the world to us. Building the world's first fully automated robotic fruit and veg processing system for specifically packing houses post harvest system. We focused on that post harvest element because no one really had a robotic system for that industry either. People were working on harvestings, they go into field and try to harvest the printer wedge, or they're doing end of line automation, which is palletizing picking up boxes into one place, another place. But no one was really working on how do you, once you've harvested the fruit. How do you then process it, look at quality and cut it into pieces if it's grapes, or get the right shine for what does Walmart want versus Trader Joe's for example.You know that that level of distinction, everyone employs people to do it. The industry always wanted to automate that section and never been able to do that because robotic systems weren't ready.”
Over the past few years, Wootzano has expanded from the UK to the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and Malaysia.
