Robotisation leading to major water savings in the fruit industry
Created in 1988, Maître Prunille specialises in Agen prunes and dried fruits. The French company benefited from Lexem’s help - industry-expert Business Unit from VINCI Energies - to achieve water savings in several processes, while maintaining a high-quality production.
Lexem’s work on the first site comprised the installation of a robotised island designed to empty stacks of fresh fruits palox. The new device replaces a forklift operator who used to abruptly empty palox into a water tank fitted with a recycling bin and generating major water waste.
Emptying these palox with a precise robot has enabled the customer to limit overflow and save up to 30% to 40% of the water consumed during the 8-week harvest, with two 8-hours shifts 7 days a week.
On the motorized prunes pitting process of two other sites, Lexem installed a water recycling system equipped with an automatic filtration. The system allows a decrease of water consumption while mimicking as much as possible the finest manual pitting method.