Stäubli robots and QING's STAQ grade 100,000 peaches an hour in Greece

Agrophoenix was founded in 2018 in Greece's Imathia region with the stated aim of differentiating itself from standard fruit-processing models. That ambition shows in its production choices: a new line for fruit balls in pouches, and aseptic diced fruit packed in 200-liter bins usable year-round for cup products. The peach-grading line was built with a specific goal — removing fruit with pit fragments. After washing, steam-peeling, cutting into halves, and depitting, the fruit is pre-inspected by a vision system, mainly for color, before reaching the eight conveyors.

QING, a Dutch startup based in Arnhem, developed the STAQ framework — See, Think, Act — for the food industry. QING's commercial director Will Uijting says the same software and functions work across products like meat and biscuits, with grippers and algorithms adapted per product. The robots are Stäubli TS2-80 units in the HE version, which have washdown capabilities: protected joints, corrosion-resistant materials, and inner pressure that keeps vapor, steam, or water out during cleaning. The cells require frequent cleaning — every four hours the lines stop for 20 minutes for automatic CIP-like cleaning, and each Sunday a more intense cleaning with food-grade detergent takes place.

This is not a laboratory demonstration but a completed first harvest season, which suggests the approach is moving from pilot to routine production. The next engineering target is harder: an automated system to remove pit fragments from peach halves, before or after sorting, that Ioannidis describes as the next big thing.