Potato Review

www.potatoreview.com POTATO REVIEW SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 23 SIGN POST NEWS O NE of Cornwall’s leading potato growers has invested in a new purpose-built grading facility for its early season and ware potatoes after seeing demand soar in 2020. The Button family has been growing potatoes, blueberries and cereals at Tregawn Farm since they bought it in 1939. Benefitting from the coastal climate, EW Button & Sons supplies its salad, main crop and processing potatoes to major supermarkets, processors and exporters. Joe Button said: “Demand for homegrown produce has rocketed in the last couple of years, andwe needed to invest in a new line to keep up.” Haith’s Sales Director Duane Hill also said Cornish potatoes are growing in popularity and his company has been seeing more interest from growers as a result. The new line at EW Button can handle 30 tonnes per hour. The Cornish potatoes are tipped directly from the tractor-trailer into a Haith Supa-Flow Bulker. The 2.4m wide bulker features dual direct drive, double incline belt for easy loading, and a crop flow control unit where sensors control the speed of the bulker. The crop passes through a Haith Evolution Multi-Separator and into a Tomra 3A Optical Sorter, which removes stone, clod and green potatoes from the dirty crop before entering a series of eight Haith Supa-Flow screen graders. The screen graders feature three full-width agitators that can run at various speeds and feature dual roller screen drives and a crop unplugging roller in a maintenance- friendly yet robust construction. Once size-graded, the potatoes are filled into boxes via SupaFill 400 box fillers. Controlled by a touchscreen HMI, these fillers are gentle on the crop and feature rubber door stop belts multi box height filling functionality. Joe said his team has seen throughput speeds increase by 35% and a significant improvement in crop quality with no mechanical damage and the majority of stone and clod removed. He said: “Our old line was starting to show its age and was nowhere near as effective as this new Haith line.” Demand surge sees Cornish growers invest “Demand for homegrown produce has rocketed in the last couple of years.”