Selo (Netherlands) - Nature’s Pride has the first operational avocado packing robot in the world. This innovation, called the Speedpacker, packs avocados ergonomically and efficiently without making concessions to quality.

The Speedpacker has three feed streams and is capable of processing 240 avocados per minute. As demand for avocados increases, Nature’s Pride intends to use this to be an even better partner for its growers and customers. The camera technology detects the avocados for the grippers. In this way the grippers know exactly how to pick up the avocados and place them in the boxes. Nature’s Pride entered a partnership with the machinery maker Selo to develop the Speedpacker. The process took about two years and involved extensive testing. The robot is now operational in the packing room in Maasdijk.

“The Speedpacker is the result of a unique collaboration between Selo and Nature’s Pride, where Nature’s Pride contributed all its knowledge of avocados and Selo its knowledge of robotics and grippers”, says Willibrord Woertman, CEO of Selo. We have succeeded in automatically packing avocados which were previously packed manually.”  It is a fragile product, but the avocados are handled in a good way.

The robot is now operational 24 hours a day in the packaging area of Nature’s Pride in Maadijk(NL). Woertman expects that there will be a lot of interest in the Speedpacker worldwide. “due to Covid-19, packaging companies all over the world have had problems deploying staff. Our machine can run 24 hours a day and you only need two operators. With the increasing popularity of avocados, this a godsend for many companies.”