Fresh Produce Automation & Digitalisation

As a leading provider of automation solutions for the fresh produce sector, we understand the unique challenges and opportunities you face. Our state-of-the-art technologies, combined with extensive experience and a customer-focused approach, have helped streamline processes, optimise efficiency, and enhance the quality of your products. Discover the benefits of our fresh produce automation solutions, learn about our tried-and-tested approach, and explore our case studies.

Trends in the Fresh Produce Industry

The fresh produce industry is continually evolving, and staying ahead of emerging trends is crucial for businesses seeking to remain competitive. Here are three key trends shaping the sector:

  1. Rising labour costs: As labour costs continue to rise, businesses are seeking ways to reduce their reliance on manual labour and lower operational expenses. There are certain jobs you can’t automate in fresh produce, so our focus is on making people more productive. Think 60, instead of 50 punnets per minute from per packing team.

  2. Growing product complexity: With increasing consumer demand for diverse and high-quality products, businesses must adapt their processes to accommodate a wider range of produce and packaging options.

  3. Traceability: Regulatory requirements and consumer preferences are driving the need for improved traceability throughout the supply chain, ensuring compliance with food safety regulations and fostering trust with customers. Grower code management and fruit provenance is critical.

“The introduction of automated systems from OAL has completely changed our operations. Since its installation, we’ve been able to streamline our processes and prevent errors before they caused further issues, protecting our reputation, enhancing trust and confidence. We’ve also seen the significant opportunity in increasing efficiency and operational effectiveness.”
— Leena Malde, Executive Chair, Wealmoor

Opportunities

By leveraging automation in the fresh produce industry, you can unlock a range of advantages for your business, including:

  1. Increased efficiency: Automate time-consuming and repetitive tasks, allowing your team to focus on more strategic and value-added activities.

  2. Enhanced product quality: Consistent handling and processing of produce, leading to higher quality standards and reduced spoilage.

  3. Improved labour productivity: Lower dependency on manual labour, mitigating labour shortages and decreasing operational expenses.

  4. Improved traceability: Gain better visibility into your supply chain, ensuring compliance with food safety regulations and enabling quick responses to potential issues.

  5. Scalability: Effortlessly scale your operations to meet growing demands or seasonal fluctuations.

Fresh Produce Automation Solutions

Our fresh produce automation solutions encompass a wide range of applications, including:

  1. Label and date code verification: Ensure accurate labelling to comply with regulations and prevent costly errors.

  2. Downtime and pack count tracking: Identify and address the root causes of unplanned downtime to minimise its impact on your operations. Accurately track the number of packs produced and maintain consistency across your production lines.

  3. Productivity tracking: Monitor and analyse performance metrics to optimise workflows and boost overall productivity.

  4. ERP & Reporting integration: Seamlessly integrate our automation solutions with your existing ERP system for streamlined data management. Leverage advanced analytics and reporting tools like Power BI to gain valuable insights and make data-driven decisions.

Case Studies

Explore our success stories in fresh produce automation through these real-life case studies.

Featured
Worldwide Fruit, UK - Stopping human error with automated product label verification
Worldwide Fruit, UK - Stopping human error with automated product label verification

Worldwide Fruit is a growing £200+ million turnover fruit marketing and distribution business. Quality is critical to their customers, and they wanted a solution that could scale across their complex operations handling thousands of SKUs from over 1,000 global growers. OAL has helped Worldwide Fruit automate to ensure all its products have the right date code, right packaging and country of origin.

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Wealmoor, UK - Improving Quality with Automation
Wealmoor, UK - Improving Quality with Automation

Wealmoor has built a reputation for specialty fruit and vegetables, supplying high-volume, high-quality produce every week. Across their UK factories, they have automated their date coding and packaging processes with the OAL Connected system including Autocoding and APRIL Eye functionality. Going digital has enabled them to eliminate product packaging and quality issues and significantly reduce food waste.

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Fresh salad manufacturer increases yield and reduces wastage
Fresh salad manufacturer increases yield and reduces wastage

OAL has helped one of the UK’s largest fresh salad operations reduce wastage and increase the efficiency of their packaging line with automation.

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Our Approach & Experience - The OAL Way

We pride ourselves on our extensive experience providing tailored automation solutions to the fresh produce industry. Our experts, with backgrounds in food manufacturing, engineering, and technology, work closely with our clients to understand their unique needs and design solutions that deliver results.

We work closely with our customers guided by the following principles:

  1. We start with the end in mind: We define clear objectives, analyse current processes, and prioritise automation initiatives to align with your overall business goals. From the initial stages of a project, we collaborate closely with our clients and offer expert advice to build a specification that ensures the solution is both effective and easy to use.

  2. We collaborate to build your internal capability: We invest in your team's knowledge and capabilities, fostering a learning culture to promote the smooth integration of new technologies. We partner with you and build your solution on leading industrial platforms utilising best-in-class technology from global technology vendors, including Cognex and Ignition.

  3. We make it easy: We design our solutions to make the adoption and training process as simple as possible, so our customers can get the most out of their automation investment. We value feedback and strive to maintain our high standards by requesting it after every project and support ticket.

Save £100,000s with automated grower code changes