In today’s fast-paced world, the demand for high-quality, efficiently processed food products is greater than ever. At CFT, we are committed to pioneering advancements that meet these demands head-on. Digital Tomato is a performance monitoring and improvement package, which represents a significant leap forward in the food and beverage machinery industry, particularly in the processing of tomatoes. This initiative is designed to address the critical challenges faced by our customers while optimizing efficiency and reducing energy consumption.
Understanding the challenges
The tomato processing industry is characterized by several inherent challenges. It is a highly energy-intensive sector with complex production processes that are concentrated over short periods. This seasonal nature of production necessitates reliable and efficient performance to maximize output and ensure the quality of high-value products like tomato paste, puree, diced, peeled, and sauce.
Addressing these issues is critical not only for reducing operational costs but also for maintaining competitiveness in a rapidly evolving market.
Digital Tomato: an end-to-end IoT solution
Digital Tomato is CFT’s response to these challenges. It is an end-to-end Internet of Things (IoT) solution that integrates advanced hardware and software, expert support and tailored solutions to monitor, predict, and optimize the entire tomato processing line. This sophisticated system transforms traditional reactive maintenance models into predictive maintenance, ensuring that equipment operates at peak efficiency throughout the production cycle.
Your processing line will feature state-of-the-art edge devices and IoT technology, providing immediate access to key production metrics and equipment status via cloud-based dashboards on various devices, 24/7. All data are collected in a single management dashboard, offering a three-tiered view of operations: overall, line-specific and equipment-specific.
In this way, Digital Tomato turns raw data into actionable insights, offering weekly reports and feedback from technical experts to continuously improve performance. Customized analytics help identify areas for improvement, facilitating strategic decision-making and long-term operational efficiency.
The Five Pillars of Digital Tomato
- Extraction Yield: Optimizing extraction yield for maximum efficiency with potential gains of +0.5%-2%.
- Evaporators Balance for Energy Saving: Maximizing efficiency through advanced thermal management.
- Minimize equipment downtime: Addressing emergency downtime through a condition monitoring system (CSM).
- Final Brix Accuracy: Enhancing precision of Brix degree regulation.
- Product Quality: Unified data collection and management system to correlate cause and effect.
The Financial Impact
Adopting Digital Tomato can lead to significant financial benefits for our customers. The system’s ability to minimize downtime and enhance yield translates into substantial revenue gains. For instance, the energy savings, increased extraction yield, and improved final product yield can collectively result in an average recurring savings of up to 500,000 euros per season for a single tomato processing line.
Note: These estimates are obtained under the following assumptions:
- Season length: 75 days
- Standard tomato line 4200 tons/day
- Cost of downtime 60€/ton/day
- Raw material cost 120 €/ton
- Steam energy cost 45 €/ton