(Key Technology: Walla Walla, WA) -- From humble beginnings growing vegetables for hungry neighbors during the Great Depression, R.S. Cockerill has grown to become one of the largest independent potato packers in the United Kingdom today. Cockerill credits much of this success to its top-quality potatoes and budget-friendly prices. These often-conflicting goals are both addressed with the help of Key Technology’s Herbert OCULUS optical sorters for whole potatoes, which automate defect removal to improve production efficiencies while ensuring final product quality.

“Before Herbert OCULUS we were sorting by hand, but that was getting increasingly difficult as the labor market got tighter, and extreme weather began making incoming product quality more variable,” says David Elvidge, operations manager at Cockerill. “We wanted to automate sorting to take some pressure off our workforce. At the same time, we wanted to improve the consistency of our final product quality when incoming defect loads would spike. We’ve been so happy with our first OCULUS, we bought four more last year.”

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