AVEVA, a UK-based provider of engineering and industrial software, announced a partnership with TOMRA Sorting Food, Austria, to embed SCADA technology in sensor-based sorting and packhouse solutions for the fresh produce industry. This agreement unlocks greater operator performance, visibility and efficiency with TOMRA and Compac equipment.

“An AVEVA and TOMRA partnership combines the most advanced automation technology and best practices to deliver a step change in next-generation packhouse operations. AVEVA brings vast experience of industrial automation across multiple verticals,” says Mike Riley, head of TOMRA Food Grading. “Compac, now part of TOMRA, has decades of global packhouse operational experience, which is now being applied to the AVEVA platform.”

“Continued success for our company will be influenced by effective use of the latest technology to improve automation, control and decision-making. It’s a key focus area for us, and we’ve seen significant performance and efficiency improvements from recent automation projects. We welcome the partnership between AVEVA and Compac to advance automation in the packhouse,” adds Sam Parnagian, vice president of operations at Fowler Packing, Fresno, Calif.

The first Compac product resulting from this partnership is Smartline, which is built on Wonderware by AVEVA. Smartline features an operational dashboard for visualization of line performance and an intuitive user interface designed to facilitate line control for packhouses of all sizes.

 “AVEVA’s world-class industrial solution portfolio has the technology, scale and performance to meet the growing digital requirements of today’s food and beverage industry,” says Rashesh Mody, senior vice president, AVEVA. “Partnering with TOMRA provides a future-proof solution to take advantage of the Industrial IoT to collect all the data necessary to improve performance and efficiency.”