A Fruitful Year – 2023 Recap

2023 has been a busy year for us and our customers. It’s been a year where we’ve travelled and met with new markets, have rolled out new technologies and seen our clients achieve new efficiencies and flexibility to upgrade and meet demand as their businesses grow.

But first, let’s start with a big one…

GP Graders Celebrate 60!

This year we celebrated 60 years in business – although we’ve been around orchards and the fruit-picking industry for much longer than that. 1963 was the year our journey to design and manufacture the best sorting and grading solutions for fresh producers and packers around the globe began.

It all started with redesigning the belt and roller system for gentler handling and today our drive to innovate and improve grading operations has culminated in our state-of-the-art vision grading system gpVision™.

Fruit Logistica Berlin

In February we headed over to Berlin to attend Fruit Logistica, arguably the most important trade show on the horticulture industry’s calendar. The 3-day event brought together nearly 2600 exhibitors from 92 countries.

With our regional country manager from Chile, Matias Heitzer and our design and development Director, Timothy Stack from Melbourne, representing GP Graders (along with team members from Milbor PMC and A&B Packing) our Fruit Logistica stand was well attended and welcomed a steady stream of guests to take a look at our unique ‘sanitary’ build of our Blueberry AirJet® grader.

The team had the opportunity to showcase how the AirJet® grader accurately sorts blueberries into various specified quality grades and how gently fruit is handled with some unique machine design features.

It was an incredible opportunity to get back to face-to-face networking, connect with those in the industry and demonstrate the GP Grader’s difference in person. Thank you for to everyone who stopped to talk to us or say hello.

gp601 Uptake is Growing

The new weight grading platform, gp601, utilises our latest technology to sort fruit accurately and efficiently according to weight, building upon our longstanding reputation of excellence in fruit grading.

One great thing about moving to the gp601 system is that it’s gpVision-ready. So, when you want to incorporate defect detection, it’s an easy upgrade. It’s this flexibility that has seen even more growers upgrade to this system.

Infantino Orchards in the Swan Hill region of Victoria is just one of many grading lines that have benefitted from the new gp601 grading platform. It’s been pleasing to see the increased efficiencies gained by this and other growers as they upgrade and take their packing operations to the next level.

MultiView™ Rollout has Been a Success

Being able to analyse almost every millimetre of the surface of the fruit allows gpVision™ to go to work and identify problem fruit and remove it – well before manual sorting is required.

Being able to see the bottom of the cherry is imperative as stalks can often mask cracks on the bottom of the fruit when only top-down cameras are used. It’s been estimated that we’re getting up to 97% of all defects. With yet another rainy cherry season in Australia, this technology has been instrumental in reigning in labour costs and ensuring that all sellable fruit is identified and sorted accurately.

gpVision™ Training

In November, we’ve began conducting in-house training for the gpVision™ software interface and the feedback was fantastic. Anand, our remote support technician took attendees through various settings, adjustments and theories about how the system works to gain a deeper insight into the capabilities of the system, helping operators get the best out of their fruit grading machinery.

We Wouldn’t be Here Without You

It’s been a challenging year across the globe. Rising living costs, hesitancy for lending and tumultuous trading conditions have meant that 2023 has kind of been a year of fight, flight or freeze mode.

That being said, in the agricultural sector, the show must go on! We are incredibly grateful to the customers who have made capital investments with GP Graders solutions in their business, trusting that it would make significant improvements and ultimately, maintain profitability.

From all the team at GP Graders, we wish our southern hemisphere customers the very best for the cherry and stone harvest fruit seasons and our broader global audience our best wishes for the festive season.