Ready to eat: Innovative technology for aromatic organic mangoes
This September, the time has come: Our very own mango sorting machine gets delivered and will be assembled by dedicated staff in our warehouse. As soon as that’s done, the test phase begins – and eventually everything should be finely tuned and running smoothly. We hope to deliver our first ripened organic mangoes in November.
The highly technical and electronically sensitive machine was manufactured by AWETA in the Netherlands. It was there we recently got our first look in. “It is quite remarkable what technology can do today,” says Erdal Kizilyol, Head of Packaging at BioTropic in Duisburg, who was on-site. “Each mango is checked individually with pressure, visuals, sound and light. The sensitive sensors and a sophisticated software sort the fruit according to level of ripeness, colour, size and quality. Inner as well as outer damage is immediately recognised and rejected.”
The sorting system goes hand in hand with the mango ripening chambers that are already completed. Soon our mangoes will ripen in four of these special chambers in accordance with customer requirements. Two of our existing banana ripening chambers were also upgraded and can additionally ripen mangoes.
But why should mangoes be ripened? Mangoes taste best ripe and picked straight from the tree – the aroma and the Brix-Value* are then optimally developed. However, mangoes are harvested before their actual full maturity. This is important, otherwise the fruits would over-ripen during the sea journey and spoil too quickly. This is where our ripening chambers take over the other quality measures. The ripening of the fruit is encouraged in a natural way byusing humidity and temperature. The aroma and sugar content develop the best way possible, and customers can buy a ripe“ready to eat” mango in the store. We can ripen up to 100 tonnes of mangoes per week.
We gain control over the quality and ripeness level of our mangoes using our new mango concept. So in the future we can deliver mangoes whose enjoyability factor isn’t just left to chance.
Mangoes grow in tropical and sub-tropical climates. Our source countries are Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ecuador and Peru. We also get organic mangoes from Spain, where the harvest season is in early autumn Due to the variety of source countries and the different harvesting times, mangoes are available at BioTropic all year round. We offer the following types: Amelie, Ataulfo, Keitt, Kent, Osteen and Tommy Atkins.
* Brix-Value = describes the sugar content of fruit and veg as a percentage
Text: Visnja Malesic
Images: BioTropic GmbH
Version: September 2017
Tags: Burkina Faso (GB), Duisburg (GB), Ecuador (GB), Ivory Coast (GB), Mali (GB), Mangos (GB), Peru (GB), Ripening chambers (GB), Senegal (GB)