The
raw fruits are unloaded into the washing basin and washed on the roll conveyor
by means of a spraying system. And, they are picked up by the discharging
elevator. There, they are sprayed again and subsequently transported to the
fruit grader. They are calibrated according to sizes, and subsequently, fall on
to conveyor belts. From this conveying system, the fruits are collected by
chutes into the automatic fruit peeler where the fruit peels are scraped out
while the waste is being removed by a belt conveyor. The fruit parts and the
juice are transported to the juice line.
On
the picking and sorting belts the peeled fruit cylinders are inspected and cut
into slices. The slices emerging from the slicing machine are picked again and
sorted. The clean fruits are manually led to the coring and can loading
machine, while the spotted slices are manually taken to the
re-sizer/corer/cutter machine on the opposite side of the belt and, if required,
cut into pieces.
The
slices are filled into cans. The filled cans are transported to the vacuums
syruper and placed there on the feeding conveyor to be filled up with sugar
solution and closed under vacuum and pasteurized.
If
desired, the slices can be processed to titbits and canned in a special titbit
filling line. The fruits cores are conducted to the milling unit by means of a
conveyor belt together with the crushed fruit parts and the juice from the
peelers. After milling the mash is collected in a preliminary juice extraction
vessel. The juice is pumped to the entry vessel of the tubular heater and
cooler. The mash is mechanically pressed and the resulting juice collected in
the entry vessel. From here, the juice flows to the tubular heater and is
heated up to 90 o C for sterilizing purposes, then cooled down to 45
o C and treated enzymatically to reduce the pectin content. The
treated juice is pre-cleared by means of a centrifuge and conveyed to the
concentration plant where it is concentrated to the final density required. The
concentrate is stored in tanks or shipped in drums.
Alternatively, it is possible to use
a technology that processes and can a single variety of fruit such as pineapple
or mango or papaya at a lower cost of investment. This also requires relatively
lesser production manpower. However, this makes the plant to be dependent upon
the availability of the chosen variety.
