RFID fruit and vegetable automatic picking and intelligent identification solution

Many people enjoy their delicious and nutritious tomatoes – as raw fruit, in tomato juice or with pasta. About 20 million Australians eat an average of 22kg of processed tomatoes each year. KAGOME, a Japanese tomato processing company founded in 1899, claims that it has more than 100 years of history in tomato cultivation and processing. Since 2010, the KAGOME Australian factory in Echuca has grown and processed tomatoes, supplying high-quality tomato products to food companies in Australia and other countries. SICK radio frequency identification (RFID) technology enables KAGOME to ensure product traceability and greatly improve the efficiency of the production process.

The Australian Food and Daily Commodity Council (AFGC) website shows that "In the production and sales process of food and daily necessities, protecting the health and safety of consumers is the most basic requirement and is also the legal obligation of all relevant enterprises." Quality control covers KAGOME The entire process from tomato seed management to crop growth until the product is put on the shelves for sale. By minimizing the use of agrochemicals and maximizing natural pollination, we ensure that every tomato is grown in the most environmentally friendly way for people, the crop itself, and the environment. Today, how to automate tomato picking and processing is an urgent problem that needs to be solved, and how to transport tomatoes from the fields to the factory floor in the most efficient way is a logistics challenge.

Looking for automated identification solutions

In the fields of Echuca, KAGOME uses 12 harvesters to load tomatoes into more than 300 large wide-mouth boxes with a capacity of 14 tons. Each box filled with fresh tomatoes is unloaded onto a mat and awaits a truck (12 in total) to take it to a weighbridge near the factory. It takes about 90 minutes to get from the field to the KAGOME factory, and each truck can transport three boxes at a time – which means each truck can transport approximately 42 tons of tomatoes at a time. Three years ago, there was always a queue of trucks near the weighbridge, and drivers had to wait 12 minutes before they could get out of the truck to weigh the tomatoes. As part of KAGOME's quality control process, three samples from each box must be taken and laboratory tested to determine if the tomatoes actually came from KAGOME's farms. In addition, drivers must prepare relevant documents to record the picking process, yield and quality. This process increases the potential for human error in paperwork-based quality control systems, potentially allowing contaminated product to reach consumers, greatly increasing the chances of widespread food-borne illness. Therefore, in order to ensure traceability, KAGOME Australia began to look for solutions to achieve paperless automatic identification of weighbridges.

Ensuring traceability: What is the best solution for tomato identification?

Food traceability refers to the process of tracking a product’s history and sharing this data throughout the entire processing process – a so-called “farm to fork” initiative. While traceability has always been a priority for the food and beverage industry, the need for real-time recalls has increased in Australia in recent years (either due to factory processing errors or product recalls conducted by FSANZ) . In an ideal situation, there would be no need for a product recall; however, once a recall event occurs, eliminating the impact as much as possible is the focus of every food manufacturer's compensation plan. An effective tracking and tracing system consists of multiple parts, the first of which is accurate and rapid identification. For years, the workhorse of identification has been the ubiquitous barcode. Throughout the production process, food can be identified through a unique barcode; the barcode can be affixed to containers during processing, on finished product packaging, on boxes and pallets during transportation, and ultimately on retail Store shelves. KAGOME experts are looking for real-time recognition solutions that can cope with environments such as mud and tomato juice, as well as high temperatures, wind and rain.

Simplifying the picking process with radio frequency identification (RFID)

As radio frequency identification (RFID) technology continues to develop and become cheaper, its use in food tracking is becoming more widespread. It is widely used in large raw material containers and bulk mixed materials. It offers businesses multiple ways to streamline and manage relevant processes, especially in terms of traceability and process reliability. Wireless identification technology opens up new areas for automatic data logging. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology has been used in the automotive industry for many years, attaching a tag to the car body and encoding each vehicle's data into it. Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can provide more functionality than barcode technology because they can be read/written directly without visual contact with the tag. In addition, they are also very strong and durable, so they can withstand harsh environmental conditions such as heat, mud or moisture.

SICK Australia's Industry Sales Manager Jean-Michel Maclou and Sales Engineer Christian Herr demonstrated the RFU63x read/write device to KAGOME in 2012. The device serves as an ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) solution for tracking and tracing reusable containers, while also providing batch inspection capabilities. In addition, the RFU63x can also be used as an independent intelligent system. Integrated functions such as data processing and filtering ensure stable read performance and short read cycles. In January 2013, KAGOME installed six SICK RFU63x devices at Echuca's weighbridge and unloading area, each equipped with three antennas for double-layer cargo boxes. The radio frequency identification (RFID) tags affixed to the tomato bins are durable and stable and remain with them from the beginning of the picking process. RFU63x fully meets KAGOME's needs for paperless automatic identification of tomatoes. This makes it possible to use radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to avoid errors that often occur during the entry and exit of goods, such as inaccurate quantity and quality data and missing accounts.

SICK RFU63x readers do not require visual contact with the RFID tag

Radio frequency identification (RFID) enables real-time identification of the tomatoes’ origin. During the paperless identification process, truck drivers no longer need to get out of their vehicles at the weighbridge, thus increasing their safety. Trucks spend less time at the weighbridge, long lines of trucks at the weighbridge and in front of the tomato unloading area are a thing of the past, and delivery efficiency is greatly improved. Since the time a truck needs to spend at the weighbridge has been reduced from the previous 12 minutes to 2 minutes, truck drivers can make one extra trip per 12-hour rotation.

Assuming that the fleet has a total of 12 trucks and each truck can load an average of 42 tons of tomatoes, then through the use of new radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, productivity can be increased by 504 tons. With the help of more reliable real-time data brought by SICK intelligent identification technology, KAGOME not only gains the ability to make the best decisions, but also greatly improves productivity and efficiency.