Public Funding for Tong Engineering Limited

Tong Engineering Ltd is one of the world's leading manufacturers of high quality vegetable grading and handling equipment. We have over 90 years of experience in manufacturing advanced and intelligent handling systems for efficient grading, washing, polishing and processing of a wide variety of crop. There is growing 'desire' in the market place for crop quality assurance systems both from growers and processors, but for growers in particular, currently available system costs are prohibitive. We aim to create a versatile, low cost quality assurance system that utilises the latest Artificial Intelligence software and conveyor handling technology. We aim to combine this with new designs of mechanical sorting hardware to create a reliable, low cost sorting system. We also want the system to be quickly and easily re-deployed for vegetables such as potatoes, onions, carrots, parsnips, swede and beetroot. The system will be used to segregate foreign objects and vegetables with defects away from 'good' crop. These systems can be deployed at the farmer's store or in the processor's 'goods in yard' or in the processing factory to assess crop quality. We aim to lower the capital cost of such systems and improve their versatility so they can be re-deployed on other root crops quickly and easily.

Tong Engineering Ltd is one of the world's leading manufacturers of high quality vegetable grading and handling equipment. We have over 90 years of experience in manufacturing advanced and intelligent handling systems for efficient grading, washing, polishing and processing of a wide variety of crop. There is growing 'desire' in the market place for crop quality assurance systems both from growers and processors, but for growers in particular, currently available system costs are prohibitive. We aim to develop a versatile, low cost quality assurance system that utilises the latest Artificial Intelligence software and conveyor handling technology. We aim to combine this with new designs of mechanical sorting hardware to create a reliable, low cost sorting system. We also want the system to be quickly and easily re-deployed for other vegetables such as potatoes, onions, carrots, parsnips, swede and beetroot. The system will be used to deflect foreign objects and vegetables with defects away from 'good' crop. These systems can be deployed at the farmer's store or in the processor's 'goods in yard' or in the processing factory to assess crop quality. We aim to lower the capital cost of such systems and improve their versatility so they can be re-deployed on other root crops quickly and easily.

Soft rot, a bacterial infection of potato tubers, leads to large losses for the industry along the storage and supply chain in their efforts to supply high quality potatoes to the consumer. The current washing processes cannot guarantee the removal of the bacteria in some circumstances, and this project aims to develop a more effective cleaning system. The new system combines ozone treatment (an active form of oxygen that is an effective and low residue sanitiser; frequently used in drinking water treatment systems) with a innovative segregation and soft handling system that is designed to minimise damage to the potato skins and to transport ozonised water to the tuber surface where it wipes off soils and sanitises more effectively. This industrially led project combines some of the UK's leading companies in the fields of ozone treatment, polymer development, agricultural engineering and potato packing, with scientific support from the Potato Council's Sutton Bridge research facility. We aim to be able to reduce soft rot by 50%, which could save the UK industry up to £100 million in waste costs.

We manufacture crop harvesting, cleaning & sorting equipment, mainly for root crops including potatoes. These crops often carry heavy soil deposits and dried on mud can be particularly difficult to wash off. For stubborn, heavy clay based dried mud, washing costs can exceed crop value. We have established a new method to remove these stubborn deposits and we are characterising the process to allow optimisation for commercial purposes. We will work with independent experts to assess the concept process and confirm the scientific principles and mechanisms in operation. We will then scope out further research and development activities. This new process will enable us to offer an enhanced washing technology that should be more cost effective and potentially faster than current technology, especially for stubborn mud deposits. This would enable us to offer processing cost savings to customers and facilitate greater crop choice for heavy clay soils.