Tomra Food has unveiled its new, more agile and focused organizational structure, showcased its sorting, grading, and packing solutions, and launched three new AI-powered sorting and grading solutions during Fruit Logistica 2024 exhibition.

Executive Vice President and Head of Tomra Food, Harald Henriksen, and EMEA Regional Director of Tomra Food, Karel Strubbe, made the announcements at a press conference held at the Fruit Logistica show in Berlin, Germany.

Sebastian Stoof, Vice President and Head of Customer Value at Tomra Food, spoke about the recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) sorting and grading in the food business in the afternoon on the Tech Stage of the event.

The Fruit Logistica exhibition (February 7-9), held annually at the Berlin ExpoCenter City, is the world’s leading fresh produce industry event and attracts trade visitors from 140 countries.

Closer to the Customer With the New Organizational Structure

Tomra Food’s new organizational structure puts the company closer to its clients, more responsive and flexible, and more capable of creating and launching successful products. To do this, it is implementing a new regional organization that is divided into three regions: APAC, Americas, and EMEA. It is creating a single Tomra Food team inside each location by combining its Tomra Processed Food and Tomra Fresh Food business sectors. The establishment of a new central hub that unites operations, R&D, and product development is the last component of the new organizational design. This will improve Tomra Food’s operational effectiveness and speed of innovation.

“Throughout its history, Tomra Food has shown its ability to adapt and innovate to provide the solutions our customers need. That’s what we are doing with our new organization, which will benefit them in different ways. The regional approach will allow us to operate as a local partner, having a more direct dialogue with our customers and responding swiftly to their very diverse needs. Unifying our two business areas into one Tomra Food team means that we can capitalize on the best practices from each to work more effectively and deliver top-tier solutions and services. Finally, by centralizing our R&D and operations into a dedicated unit, we will be able to leverage the collective expertise and efforts of our entire team, boosting our ability to innovate and bring more and better solutions to our customers – and lead the resource revolution with them,” Henriksen explained.

Tomra Food’s partnerships with important partners are an integral component of its dedication to fulfilling the actual demands of its clients worldwide. In this instance, Tomra Foods’ greeting room is shared with the Italian producer of fruit handling, processing, and packaging equipment, ICOEL, during Fruit Logistica 2024.

Tomra Food’s hologram machine, which debuted at Fruit Logistica 2023, returned for this year’s exhibition to showcase a wide range of the brand’s solutions. It clearly showed 3D animations and video of the Tomra 3A, Tomra 5A, Tomra 5C and Tomra 5SA sorters among others.

The New AI Sorting and Grading Evolution – Speech Highlights

Sebastian Stoof, Tomra Food’s Vice President, and Head of Customer Value, gave a presentation on Fruit Logistica’s Tech-Stage. He spoke about developments in AI technology in the food industry and how it is used to solve challenging problems in food sorting.

Sebastian explained that, for the successful application of AI in food sorting, several critical conditions must be met. They include high-quality imaging for training and operations, expert industry knowledge, expertise in Deep Learning technology, and a suitable organizational setup that allows for scale.

Sebastian concluded with remarks about the way the introduction of AI technology in food sorting is shifting customers’ expectations of sorting precision, adaptability of technology, the skillset of operators, and the support they receive from their technology providers.