Reemoon has exhibited its latest and largest Australian installation at an industry showcase held at Clear Lake Citrus in Griffith, New South Wales.
Growers and packers from across Australia visited the citrus packhouse to inspect the four-lane, 38-drop installation equipped with Fruscan 7, Reemoon’s latest blemish grading technology.
Reemoon vice director Dennis Clock said it was a great opportunity to show the Australian market what Reemoon can offer.
“We want to bring our best technology to help growers, packers and exporters with quality assurance and removing blemished fruit,” said Clock.
“We want to help them meet their customers’ requirements and bring down the cost to the industry.”
Patrick Mancini, managing director of Clear Lake Citrus, first became acquainted with Reemoon’s technology on a visit to the company’s headquarters in China back in 2019.
When Clear Lake Citrus was looking to upgrade its 15-year-old machinery, build quality, blemish detection and customer support all factored into Mancini’s decision to choose Reemoon.
“When we actually physically saw the machine, we saw it was actually more robust than some of the European models. So we were interested to look further into Reemoon and what they could provide us,” said Mancini.
“The new Fruscan 7 can pick up blemishes such as albedo, which is prevalent this year in our citrus growing area, and also fruit split and fruit rot. With the new Fruscan 7 they have six cameras per lane which get multiple pictures of the fruit for more accurate grading.
“It makes a big difference because now we can more or less guarantee to customers the quality that they get. If they want a premium grade they get a premium grade.”
Shane Jensen lead engineer on the Clear Lake Citrus installation said Reemoon delivered great value for money and would work with customers to get the most out of their machines.
“Mechanically the build quality is really decent and it will do the job you expect from a sorting machine. You can see that on the table and when you compare value, it’s exceptional,” said Jensen.
“With Reemoon the customer sets the quality and grades they want and changes can be made to suit the packouts of each individual customer. A lot of the in-depth programming is done directly by Reemoon. The people that have written the software are the people doing the fine tuning so at the end of the day the product coming off the table is exactly what the customer expects.”
The Reemoon proposition
In a presentation at the showcase Clock described the path the company had traversed before coming to Australia. The company was founded in 2001 by Zhu Yi, a citrus grower, in response to the high cost of machinery.
“Every year his family sent fruit to another packing shed and they could not control the quality of their fruit, so they made the decision to build their own and purchased a sorting machine from Europe,” said Clock.
“It took three years for Zhu to get his investment back and so he made the decision to build his own machines and lower the cost for the industry because he knew how hard it is for growers to recoup costs with the challenges they face year to year.”
In the past 20 years the company has rapidly grown by advancing its technology. It now has over 70 per cent share in the China market and it has 420 customers spread across 24 countries around the globe.
Clock said Reemoon’s philosophy has not changed since its formation and the company is committed to offering first-class service to support its value proposition. After each installation, a Reemoon technician will remain on-site for a month to ensure the machine is meeting the customer’s needs in addition to 24-hour online service support.
Reemoon currently has five installations in Australia but has plans to grow. Clock said the company is in the midst of establishing an Australian arm and adding more service technicians across the country to increase its capacity.
