Herbert Engineering, the leaders in handling systems for the agricultural and fresh pack industries, announced the launch of Ultra-Wash, the potato washer that allows the crop to be effectively cleaned without submersion in dirty water, at British Potato 2011.

The new Herbert Ultra-Wash was born out of a joint development project with Greenvale who tasked Herbert with the challenge to develop a specialist washer to complement their award winning Cascade Water Treatment System.

The new Herbert Ultra-Wash contains all of the excellent features from this design project. The Ultra-Wash works in conjunction with a continual water treatment system, which makes available large volumes of clean, cool water. This allows the crop to be washed without being submerged in increasingly dirty water.

The system works by blasting the tubers with jets of water as they are rotated. The barrel of the Ultra-Wash, which has a completely smooth inner surface, has no spiral, but is pitched at an angle, meaning that it is very gentle on the crop.

The potatoes are gently tipped into water and subjected to a ‘whirl pool' type pre-clean as they are moved forward by adjustable jets in this tank. Stones and clods are immediately separated while sludge and floating objects and debris are removed out of the side of the system, as the potatoes are flumed into the barrels. A jet wash provides a final clean and excellent bacterial hygiene, before passing over a highly efficient drying system.

Hydraulic tilting barrels and a motorised drier emptying blade keep downtime to a minimum when changing varieties. All the components are mounted over an integral tank system, giving a 'dry floor' solution, full stainless steel construction, fully enclosed by see through doors allowing safe operation and easy maintenance.

In 2012, Herbert Engineering will be celebrating its 40th anniversary and launching a record number of new products. From the early days of serving growers, originally in post harvest on field grading to, more recently, electronic grading for processors, Herbert's ties with the potato industry have remained strong and become the backbone for the business.