Site Planning
Installation & Commissioning
Automatic & High Efficiency
Client Name： K****A Foods Private Limited
Country： Republic of India
Region： Maharashtra – India's largest mango producing area, famous for Alphonso mangoes
Core Products： IQF Frozen Mango Slices, Diced Mango, Dried Fruit Raw Materials, Mango Slices for Pulp, High-end Dessert Ingredients
Equipment Configuration： Hadof customized high-speed mango slicing production line (including automatic peeling & pitting system, precision thickness slicing unit, online color protection and IQF quick-freezing connection module)
Commissioning Time： Q4 2021
India is the world's largest mango producer with an annual output of over 20 million tons. Alphonso mangoes from Maharashtra are known as the "King of Mangoes" for their rich aroma and delicate taste. K****A Group is a leading mango processing enterprise in the region, supplying products to Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia for a long time. With the rapid growth of the global frozen fruit and ready-to-eat dessert market, the traditional manual slicing method can no longer meet modern processing needs.
Core Challenges in Mango Slicing:
Difficult Peeling & Pitting: Mangoes have irregular shapes, and the pulp is tightly adhered to the skin and pit. Manual peeling and pitting is inefficient with high loss; skilled workers can only process less than 20kg per hour.
Soft & Deformable Pulp: Ripe mango pulp is soft and fibrous. Manual slicing easily causes extrusion deformation, leading to broken slices and poor appearance after freezing. The rejection rate by high-end customers reached 15%.
Severe Oxidation & Browning: Pulp oxidizes and discolors rapidly after slicing, turning black, seriously affecting the color of frozen slices or dried fruits, resulting in product downgrading.
Capacity & Sanitation Bottlenecks: Over 40 tons of fresh fruit need to be processed daily in peak season. Manual slicing requires more than 180 workers in shifts, with many manual contact points, making microbial control difficult and hard to pass BRC, IFS certifications.
Based on the characteristics of soft, fibrous and irregularly shaped mango pulp, Hadof team customized a fully automatic mango slicing production line for K****A Group:
1. Intelligent Peeling & Pitting Integrated Unit
Combines visual recognition and mechanical positioning to automatically identify mango posture. It first cuts the ends, removes the skin with a profiling peeling knife, and finally separates pulp and pit with a rotary pitting device. The pulp integrity rate exceeds 95%. The whole machine realizes unmanned continuous operation with a processing speed of 2 tons per hour.
2. Low-damage Thickness-fixed Slicing Unit
Adopts ultra-thin stainless steel circular blades for high-speed rotating cutting, avoiding extrusion on pulp by traditional shear slicing. Thickness adjustment range: 3mm-15mm, deviation controlled within ±0.3mm, meeting different product requirements such as frozen slices, diced fruits and dried fruits. The blade surface is treated with Teflon anti-stick coating to prevent pulp adhesion, no shutdown cleaning required for 8 hours of continuous operation.
3. Online Color Protection & Rapid Cooling System
Slices immediately enter the atomization color protection section with vitamin C and citric acid mixed solution, and antioxidants are evenly sprayed to effectively inhibit polyphenol oxidase activity and delay browning. Then it is rapidly cooled by low-temperature air flow to reduce the slice temperature below 5℃, locking aroma and color. The whole process from slicing to entering IQF quick-freezing tunnel is controlled within 90 seconds, and the oxidation browning rate drops from 12% to less than 1.5%.
4. Intelligent Color Sorting & Metal Detection
Equipped with high-speed visual color sorting system to automatically identify and remove browned slices, fiber clusters, residual pit fragments and foreign matters, with sorting accuracy over 99.5%. The rear-end metal detector ensures product safety, complying with EU and North American market standards.
5. Hygienic Design & Easy-cleaning Structure
The whole line adopts 304 stainless steel fully enclosed structure, all contact surfaces with rounded corners and no sanitary dead corners, supporting CIP in-place cleaning. Key components can be quickly disassembled, meeting the highest requirements of BRC, IFS international food standards for ready-to-eat ingredient processing.
Client Testimonial: From Fresh Fruit Export to Global Leading Frozen Mango Brand
Since the full operation of the new line in 2022, K****A Group has achieved leapfrog development:
Capacity & Efficiency
Daily Fresh Fruit Processing Capacity: Increased from less than 12 tons by manual processing to 45 tons per shift, up to 75 tons/day at full capacity, becoming the largest mango slicing processing base in western India.
Labor Optimization: The number of workers in peeling, pitting and slicing reduced from 180 to 14 technicians, labor cost reduced by more than 90%, completely getting rid of dependence on skilled seasonal workers.
Quality & Market
Finished Product Qualification Rate: Slice integrity rate increased from 68% to over 94%, thickness consistency 99%, chip rate controlled within 3%, European customer rejection rate dropped from 15% to less than 1%.
Market Expansion: Passed BRC, IFS and organic certifications, successfully entered the frozen fruit supply chain of many well-known food enterprises (such as Dole, Bonduelle) in Europe, North America and Japan. The proportion of deep-processed product exports in the group's total revenue increased from 10% to 55%.
Comprehensive Benefits
Raw Material Utilization: Through precise peeling, pitting and intelligent sorting, the comprehensive raw material utilization rate increased from 72% to 91%, saving more than 700,000 US dollars in mango raw material costs annually.
Energy Optimization: The whole line adopts high-efficiency variable frequency motors and waste heat recovery system, unit output power consumption reduced by 20% compared with traditional split equipment, winning the Green Manufacturing Special Award from the Indian Ministry of Industry.
"Hadof's mango slicing line has transformed us from traditional fresh fruit export to high value-added deep processing field. Now, every mango slice reaches global consumers' tables with precise thickness and bright color, and our products have won high recognition in the international market. This is a strategic investment that changed the fate of the enterprise."
—— Mr. Sharma, Operations Director, K****A Foods Private Limited
