The Odenberg Titan Potato Sorter

For a more efficient potato packing shed and minimizing damage, Gold Dust proudly uses the Odenberg Titan sorter.

A vital part of our packing and shipping shed is the Odenberg Titan sorter.  When potatoes come from our storage cellars, they need to be cleaned and then sorted by size while sifting out “culls” and other defects our customers don’t want.  After three different washes, our chippers then go through the Titan potato sorter.

The Odenberg Titan takes the incoming washed potatoes, sorts the rejects, culls and other potatoes with gross defects as well as other objects such as dirt clods and rocks.  The range of defects the Odenberg sorter can identify is incredible.  Black spot, cuts, dry cut, mechanical damage, scabs, discoloration – all are sorted out and sent out of the shed.  The Odenberg Titan can even sort by size (diameter and length) to help make packing more efficient and consistent.

How is it able to do this?  The potatoes pass under Odenberg’s patented Optical Sorter.  This optical potato sorter uses a combination of pulsed lighting, image processing software and advanced micro-processors to separate the good chipping potatoes from those with defects.  An operator can adjust the settings to meet the customer’s needs for size as well as for rejection priorities on an easy-to-use, touch-screen computer located at the potato sorter itself.  Since the potatoes are looked at from all sides, the damaged potatoes are easily and quickly sorted from the good ones with extremely high accuracy.  While the good potatoes move along for further sorting, the damaged and wrong-sized potatoes can be assigned to different chutes to either be ran through again or sent out as culls.

All of the first grade potatoes are then hand-checked several times for damage and rot that the Odenberg Titan sorter may have missed and check for over-sized or under-sized chippers.  After that, they’re either packaged to meet the customer’s specifications or piled into a refrigerated trailer to be sent to the customer.

To get a better idea of the process Gold Dust’s potatoes go through, starting with the chippers getting unloaded from our spud trucks to getting packaged and loaded for delivery to our customers, see the video below.  In it, you’ll see the flumes at work, the various methods of sorting we use, including the Odenberg Titan, as well as packing and loading potatoes for delivery.

If you would like see  the Odenburg Titan potato sorter in high definition, be sure you have the latest version of Quicktime to see the video.  It may take a little while for the video to load.

The Odenberg Titan has made our processing more efficient and cost effective.  With its various levels of sorting, this potato sorter has trimmed the number of people needed to manually sort the chippers while ensuring our customers consistently get the highest quality of chipping potatoes from our cellars that are the right size to meet their needs.  We are able to get loads out more quickly with the minimal damage to potatoes than before using the Odenberg sorter.  The Odenberg Titan has proven to be a great investment in improving our packing facility and for making our customers happy.