Is Artificial Intelligence the Future of TOMRA’s Resource Revolution?

Food sorting machines with the ability to think like humans could solve the greatest challenges facing the industry today, says TOMRA Sorting Food.

Food security and reducing waste are both high on the international agenda with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations estimating that by 2050, feeding a global population of nine billion will require a 70 per cent increase in food production. In addition, a report by the UK’s Institute of Mechanical Engineers suggested that as much as half of all the food produced in the world – equivalent to two billion tonnes – ends up as waste each year.

Pieter Willems, technical director at TOMRA Sorting Food, says that consumer tolerance towards natural variations in fresh and processed foods should be fed back into the manufacturing process to make it more efficient, optimise scarce resources and cut waste.

Lorraine adds: “The resource revolution is about delivering sustainable productivity, yield and cost benefits to our customers that other sorting machine manufacturers cannot. Our solutions mean our customers never have to choose between increasing their financial results and reducing their environmental impact.

“We have changed our focus in recent years to looking at how we can optimise product. It is a given that bad produce can be removed but what happens to product that is of a good enough standard to be processed is now key to the resource revolution. Optimising produce, getting more out of what comes onto the production line from field to fork is now at the heart of TOMRA Sorting Food’s ethos.”

In practice, this shift in approach to resource management is evident in where sorting takes place. In the past it has been about providing machines which allow farmers to sort product in the field – harvesters which can identify and remove bad product at the very first stage of the processing chain so that money and energy is not spent taking poor quality produce away from the field.

TOMRA Sorting Food’s sorting and peeling solutions typically recover 5-10 per cent of produce through higher yields and better utilisation, reducing pressure on the food chain and cutting food waste. That is equivalent to 25,000 trucks of potatoes per year.

Pieter adds: “Today, the entire food processing sector is far more efficient, in terms of energy and waste, and there are many more types of processing tools available for the production line to get the most out of produce. A tomato which may not be aesthetically pleasing may still be fine in terms of food quality and safety. It may not cut it as a tomato for a salad but for tomato sauce or puree it is absolutely acceptable. In the past that tomato may have gone to waste when sorted in the field but thanks to innovations in technology it can now be processed and used for food.

“This is the beginning of the ‘intelligent machines’ concept – a food sorter which goes beyond good and bad sorting to one which can optimise product. At TOMRA Sorting Food we are already giving machine operators greater control over the sort they want to carry out with our unique user interface which can be installed on machines but integrating that control and human intellect into machines is how the next resource revolution begins.”

In conclusion, Lorraine says that resource productivity and optimisation must increase: “We have no choice but to find better ways of doing things – over the next 40 years 30 per cent more people will need to be fed with a reducing amount of available farmland. Leading the resource revolution is a global issue and TOMRA, in conjunction with our customers and many other companies, is providing sustainable solutions for a more food secure future.”