The sorting industry has made fantastic progress in the last years – with stunning innovations from the bigger groups like TOMRA, KEY, Bühler, Satake and others. It seems hard to believe a total newcomer in the industry could gain market share. No problem for Austrian engineers who founded Insort. With some brilliant ideas Insort has conquered a significant share in the potato industry – and are now entering the nut and dried fruit business at full steam. To get noticed in the market they already solved some problems for almonds, walnuts and macadamias. We wanted to know the people who are driving this success. We talked to Matthias Jeindl, the CEO and visionary behind Insort sorting machines.
…The Clipper: Was it easy to enter a market that seemed pretty much saturated?
Matthias Jeindl: It was difficult because the potato industry is owned by big companies and they did not like to work with smaller suppliers at the beginning. Today we have machines all over the world – and we are excelling on all benchmarks for foreign material as well.
The Clipper: What is different about your foreign material detection?
Matthias Jeindl: The machine does not have to ‘learn’ what is foreign material, we just need to know about the good product – and every thing else is rejected. Our sensor detects 240 different signals per pixels – a standard system with RGB camera delivers only 3 signals (Red, Green, Blue = RGB). More signals mean more precision. We require quite a lot of processing power for this. To calculate and process this fast we had to overcome quite a few obstacles.
The Clipper: What is next after potatoes?
Matthias Jeindl: Our next target is the nuts and dried fruit industry. Since 2017 the first machines are installed and working at our clients’ processing lines. The results are overwhelming. We did not expect that our systems can outperform others very fast. The first clients who dared to experiment with a machine from a small Austrian supplier are our best sales representatives today. They just tell everybody about the performance of our system. And I personally like the industry – there is an atmosphere of professional collaboration.
The Clipper: Who are your first clients?
Matthias Jeindl: Our first client in california was Don Barton from Gold River Orchards for walnuts. We had to promise him in the contract that we will provide the best shell detection system available. We tested the system and we knew it was quite good. We had to promise 99,8% shell detection.
Read the story in the upcoming edition of the Clipper Magazine.
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The Clipper is the market leader in global information about nuts and dried fruit: Production and Consumption trends, science and technology, marketing and business strategies for Coconuts, Peanuts, Cashew nuts, Almonds, Walnuts, Chestnuts, Betel nuts, Hazelnuts, Pistachios, Kola nuts, Macadamia Nuts, Brazil nuts and dried fruit.