Just saw this today: http://www.fruittoday.com/articulos.php?id=1210585050939587&idioma=E
Wow! The processed sector has blown past the fresh market, both in raw potato consumption (barely) and revenue (60% more). Big sea change!
The other bit is the shift in potato production from developed to undeveloped regions. Should come as no great surprise, particularly in view of the potato quality issues in western Europe and UK the last few years. Seems like they experience either drought or flooding, but nothing in between! An I keep hearing of companies who plan to build new potato processing plants in eastern Europe- Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Czech Republic, Belarus, etc. Seems to be an ideal region in terms of weather. Perhaps economic and political conditions are less clear.
What will things look like in 10 years? With potato production in China and India soaring, will we see many new plants there? How will they deal with the horticultural, infrastructure and economic challenges there? We we see some plant closures in western Europe and UK? We people still be consuming fried strips in huge volumes, or will demand shift elsewhere? Do we see lots of specialty products rising, or mass production of a few standards to keep costs down?
Lots of questions...
Tim
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Processed Potato is BIG
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Lasers... the Basics
So why is the processing world agog about laser sorters? What is a laser sorter, anyway? How does it work? What does it do?
Some basics:
As those who studied physics know, a laser is not a sensor, but simply a light source- light that is a single wavelength and phase, very dense in energy vs. projected area. Think of the laser pointer you use for presentations. It has a laser emitter inside that puts out the light, concentrated enough so that many people in a room can see the little bright spot on the screen. Lots of power even when reflected in many directions.
One of those directions is back at the laser emitter itself. And that light coming back toward the laser emitter has no trouble getting all the way back to the emitter- it is not like trying to drive the wrong way on a busy one-way street: light seems to allow lots of stuff to happen in a confined space with no collisions. In reality, the Star Wars light sabres would not work against each other like Lucas portrays!
A number of years back, some smart folks figured out that, if you could sense the reflected light coming back at the laser source, you could generate a reflected light intensity signal everywhere you pointed the laser. And if you swept the laser across a line (think about moving your laser quickly across the presentation screen from one side to the other), you could generate a line of reflection values to match- just like one line of pixels in a digital camera's picture. And if you moved that line just a bit and scanned it again and again, you could create an endless digital image, just like a linescan camera system.
In practice, just like the linescan camera, we don't move the laser spot that is flying back and forth- we move a flow of product underneath it.
So, you might ask (knowing that laser scanning assemblies are generally more costly than cameras), why use lasers if they only generate a reflected image just like cameras? Do they sense reflected color enough better than cameras to be worth the extra cost?
No.
Laser scanners have been proven time and again to be inferior to cameras when it comes to sensing reflected light. Whether you are looking for things that are green, red, yellow, blue or even different reflections in the near infrared range, cameras detect differences better. And at lower cost. If your application is to distinguish colors, camera-based systems are the tool for the job.
Next time, we will dig a bit into what laser scanners and sorting system ARE good for.
Tim
Monday, May 12, 2008
GMOs
This just in:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/benn-gives-goahead-for-new-gm-potato-trial-825926.html
Wow!
GMOs are a big issue. Mainly because of the combination of huge potential benefits and huge (but generally unknown) threats. And now, at least on a limited, experimental basis, the UK is opening the door to GMs, if just a crack. Groundbreaking, against the backdrop of UK/EU culture.
The benefits of GMs are plethoric in scope: Imagine eradicating of the effect of pests! Imagine elimination of diseases such as sugar ends, hollow heart, net necrosis, nematodes! Picture potatoes that grow to exactly the same length and diameter! Dream of square potatoes where nubbins and slivers from cutting are a thing of the past! Am I stretching the "possible"? Of course! Is some or most of this actually within our grasp? I think so!
The potential economic benefits are staggering. Add to that the environmental benefits of less pesticide and herbicide use, and even the "green"-est among us will stop to reconsider GMO use.
The downsides? Really, they lie in the unknown, the ultimate foundation of all that we fear. The "what if's". What is GMOs somehow cause cancer? What if GMOs somehow weaken our immune system? What if GMOs stunt our growth (if they do, I'm feeding some to my 6' tall 13-year-old son!)? What if they cause strange cystic growth? What if....
This is not to downplay the seriousness of these questions. We need answers, and scientists must step up to reassure us that they have done their homework to demonstrate whether these fears are grounded in reality or just a figment of our imaginations.
Until they do, we will watch the proceedings from the UK with great interest.
Tim
Friday, May 9, 2008
Eyes to See
How is Foreign Material (FM) detected?
The question perhaps begs another question: where in the line do you want to detect (and remove) FM? Particularly, what can best be done post-packaging (where no further FM can be entrained) and what needs to be placed in other line locations?
Most folks are very aware of metal detectors- those little boxes that check packages for ferrous metals. They work fairly well, but of course have limitations: They don't work on non-metallic FM, nor on most stainless steel. And of course their resolution requires the FM to be large enough to be detected, making some wire pieces, etc. to be undetectable to these systems. So metal detectors have their purpose and role, but are not a panacea.
A few frozen potato processors have tried x-ray on packaged goods. X-ray can detect a wide range of materials, not metal only, a valuable improvement over metal detection only. The challenge for frozen product is that x-ray works on density, using through-beam transmission, looking at how much energy gets through the object. More dense objects block more of the x-ray, providing a differential signal vs. less dense objects. Problem is, most frozen product is bagged, with the individual pieces randomly oriented. So the density through the bag at any one point is highly variable- it depends on exactly how many pieces the beam must penetrate going through the bag at that point. This density variation effectively acts as "noise" to the x-ray detector: not a problem for large, very dense objects such as sizable stones and large pieces of glass. But this "noise" makes small pieces and less dense objects undetectable.
There have been some attempts to scan pre-packaged, bulk flow frozen potato products with x-ray technology. In this case, the ability to detect many foreign materials is high. The drawbacks include high cost relative to throughput, and x-ray is unable to detect foreign materials of similar density to good product, such as some plastics, rubber, wood and extraneous vegetation such as weeds.
So, like metal detectors, x-ray perhaps has its place, but does not thoroughly address the need for zero tolerance of FM. To do so, it seems we must scan the product prior to packaging, using technologies that look at reflected energy, primarily lasers and cameras. Next time, we will dig into the details of those technologies, and discuss where in the line they belong.
Tim