VariClean

Some of the most significant of the British company’s new products are:

Coilcleaner Plus

The Coilcleaner Plus moves the crop continuously, separating loose soil, clods and small potatoes from the main crop. It has a number of features that differentiate it from others, as well as improving cleaning effectiveness and providing easier maintenance.

The key components are made of polyurethane instead of steel, providing gentle and effective cleaning. Every other coil can be driven at an independent speed, giving a more variable cleaning action. The module is designed to be used with a standard interchange mechanism and can be easily fitted in place of another cleaner to suit the conditions. We are the only manufacturer to offer this interchange design on its graders.

The Coilcleaner Plus is designed for optimum cleaning performance. Easy maintenance means reduced downtime and better throughput.

Ultra-Wash

The new Ultra-Wash was born out of a joint development project with Greenvale AP to develop a specialist washer to complement their Cascade Water Treatment System. The Ultra-Wash can be integrated to work in conjunction with a continual water treatment system. This allows the crop to be effectively cleaned with minimal submersion in dirty water.

The system works by blasting the tubers with jets of water as they are rotated. The barrel of the Ultra-Wash has a completely smooth inner surface and is pitched at an angle, meaning that it is very gentle on the crop.

The potatoes are gently tipped into water and subjected to a ‘whirl pool’ type pre-clean, a jet wash provides a final clean and excellent bacterial hygiene, before passing over a drying system.

Hydraulic tilting barrels and a motorised sponge drier crop cleaning system keep downtime to a minimum when changing varieties.

“Ensuring that quality comes as standard is a promise that we deliver throughout our business and, at Herbert, our priority is to provide a first class solution from concept through to completion whatever the changing need of the market demands,” explains Jo Herbert, Marketing Director of the company

Variclean

Variclean incorporates a hydraulic drive for greater flexibility and optimised separation for the gentle removal of clod, stone, haulm and weeds. The machinery features soft foam filled plastic fluted rollers and four ebonite or steel clod rollers. The speed of the rollers can be varied, with separate speed and height controls, which can also be reversed.

It has been designed to work with all of Herbert’s graders or as a standalone machine. The Variclean comes in widths ranging from 900mm to 2400mm and from four to 12 rows.

The flexibility and range of adjustments means the Variclean is equally effective with virtually all soil types and a wide range of crops, including potatoes, carrots, onions, parsnips, turnips and celeriac.

One of the companies using Herbert technology that is particularly worthy of note is the French packaging company Ets Gourges which has recently installed a new line for washing potatoes. It can wash between 15 and 17 tonnes per hour allowing the company to supply more than 25,000 tonnes to supermarkets.

The new washline incorporates a delivery elevator, delivering dirty potatoes into a specially adapted de-stoner, before they pass into a four metre barrel washer for cleaning. Once the potatoes have been washed, they are dried via a 15-row roller drier and moved on to a grader module where they are graded to remove smalls before passing over a continuous weigh conveyor. From here the potatoes are run to the sorting and packing areas.