BEST Sorting Solution Center in Leuven officially opened

Last week, BEST opened its 4th BEST Sorting Solution Center (BSSC) in a new building at its headquarters in Leuven, Belgium. Creating an optimized customer experience, the Solution Center is the place where prospects and customers can test the BEST sorting solutions in an environment that simulates their production process. BEST uses products of the customer to demonstrate the efficiency of its sorters, allowing the client to evaluate the results before investing.

This BEST Sorting Solution Center is the fourth one in its kind. BEST now has two innovation centers in Leuven (Belgium), one in Denver (USA) and one in Hanghzou (China). All these facilities are located close to international airports, and are easily accessible, offering an optimal customer comfort. BEST has more than 20 machines available in the different locations. Many configurations of the different models are available for testing and demonstrations, allowing a multitude of applications to be tested.

On Wednesday September 21st, Kris Peeters, Flemish Prime Minister, opened the solution center in Leuven (see picture).

On this occasion, and in combination with the celebration of 15Y BEST and the bi-annual agent meeting that took place last week, BEST also announced two new technological innovations, with the next generation free fall sorters, the Opus and the Nimbus sorter.

The Nimbus is a laser / camera sorting solution that combines the efficiency of the laser detection on foreign material, together with the accuracy of the camera detecting discolorations and shape differences in free-fall. The sorter detects all color, structure, size and shape defects from a stream of good products. Besides these conventional sorting methods, the Nimbus is also able to sort based on biological characteristics, such as chlorophyll (Fluo™), mycotoxins (Detox™), and water (SWIR). To sort on shape characteristics, the machine is equipped with an additional module with a general shape sorting toolbox that adds complementary sorting capabilities by applying object oriented features like length, width, diameter, area, broken piece recognition, etc. ...

The sorter also features 3-way sorting, designed for the removal of unwanted products with high accuracy, very low false reject and an optimal yield. 3-way sorting capabilities on the BEST sorters feature two ejector modules, allowing processors to separate different reject streams that before ended up in the same stream.

The new revolutionary sorter has a new and more powerful hardware processing platform, allowing the implementation of new modules, like the BEST Smart Sort and BEST Flex Sort.

By analyzing intelligently the incoming products, the Smart Sort module helps the operator in setting parameters. This new feature ensures a faster and easy configuration of the machine. Also the operator has the possibility to adjust the sensitivity set by the Smart Sort module, according to the changing sorting circumstances.

The digital Flex Sort module eliminates the need to select and change the optimal reference drum for each specific product. It is a revolutionary technology that ensures an improved contrast between good products and defects. By using this module, customers can maximize the ease of operation and uptime, optimize the sorting performance and minimize the investments.

The Opus is a unique, state-of-the art free-fall modular camera and laser sorter with a small footprint and the ideal inspection width (1 meter) to integrate in a IQF fruit or vegetable packing line.

It is a modular system, with single or double sided camera and laser combinations. The sorter features the new high resolution BEST camera that can be combined with SWIR technology. The camera, exclusively developed for BEST, is provided with an adapted spectrum, ideal for optical sorting. It also features our new industrial high quality lenses with an advanced focusing system. The laser configuration is the optimal solution to detect foreign material among good products.
 

Thanks to the SWIR technology, water based products such as frozen fruit and vegetables absorbing the light, and difficult defects such as wood and plastic reflecting it, are detected. Contaminations (glass, cardboard, metal, …) are detected and rejected from the good product, providing optimum sorting efficiency, with an extremely low false reject.

This new generation of the Opus sorter also features 3-way sorting, for an optimal removal of defects and improved yield.

With these two new technological innovations, BEST is again setting the requirements for a new era in sorting. For every sorting issue, BEST can now offer a solution, with multiple combinations in platforms and sorting technologies.