Granlids Äppel AB
How Granlids Handled a 40% Production Surge and Slashed Packing Costs
Quick Facts
- Client: Granlids Äppel AB
- Location: Vårdö, Åland Islands, Finland
- Industry: Fruit Processing
- Commodity: Apples
- Main Problem: A 40% growth surge pushed the facility to its limit, causing manual sorting bottlenecks, slowing down fruit flow, and driving up labor costs.
Results at a Glance
- Slashed Packing Costs: Cut labor costs and boosted throughput for 12 kg loose-packed fruit. This protected tight margins on lower-value categories.
- Premium Quality: Consistently hit the 6 kg box target and kept major defects out of finished packs. This eliminated human guesswork entirely.
- Weather-Proof Performance: Maintained peak speeds and secured premium orders during difficult seasons marked by frost, insects, and small fruit sizes.
We have sped up the grading process, increasing capacity. We do not have to waste time with lesser quality fruits as we did before. The new handling/grading of loose packed fruit have resulted in significantly lower packing costs maintaining the same quality as before, but much higher output.
The Problem
Granlids scaled quickly. Heavy orchard and storage investments boosted production by 40%, pushing annual volumes to around one million kilograms. However, this massive wave of fruit completely overwhelmed their packing facility.
Granlids is driven to deliver the best quality fruit to the Finnish market. To achieve this, they strictly limit chemical use. They rely on mechanical weeding and avoid fungicide storage sprays entirely. However, farming with fewer chemicals naturally brings higher defect rates. This created severe operational bottlenecks. Quality grading slowed to a crawl, and total sorting capacity fell far behind.
This risk peaked during tough harvest seasons. Frost, insects, and cold summers left crops heavily bruised and abnormally small. Sorting this damaged fruit manually was painfully slow and expensive. Manual workers simply could not keep pace, putting tight delivery windows for premium orders at serious risk.
Working with TOMRA
Granlids overcame these manual limits by installing an advanced processing line. The system runs on the TOMRA 5S Advanced grading platform and LUCAi™ deep learning. It automates defect sorting and improves the flow of fruit from start to finish.
For lower-value 12 kg loose-packed apples, the machine cut labor costs and significantly increased capacity. This directly protected tight profit margins.
For premium tray-packed fruit, the system removed manual guesswork. It kept major defects out of finished boxes and optimized weights to hit the 6 kg target consistently.
Looking Forward
Apple growing is highly capital intensive. To protect these large investments, grading lines must deliver long-term reliability and precise fruit separation. As customer quality demands rise and chemical restrictions tighten, Granlids views smart automation as the way forward to maximize margins.
The company is collaborating closely with TOMRA to refine its LUCAi™ models, analyze grading data for smarter orchard decisions, and further optimize its mechanical line layouts.