Bruno Kilshaw, Managing Director of Sortex Limited, has completed an intensive tour of corn seed processing customers in the United States Mid West as part of the company’s drive to establish an even stronger presence in a key market sector.

“Every commodity has its own particular characteristics which demand a custom tailored solution from sorting machine manufacturers,” he said. “Sortex is investing heavily in R&D to help corn seed processors increase productivity and minimise the waste which, with such a high value product, impacts directly on the bottom line.

“That is why, with Don Uglow, our Sales Area Manager, I visited six customers who were operating, installing or assessing our sorters. It is a sector in which processors recognise the importance of investment in advanced technology and are well aware of the benefits that follow. I’m glad to say that I came away with a much clearer understanding of their priorities.”

Tim Renze of Renze Hybrids in Carroll IA is enthusiastic about the performance of his 900003L Focus, which went live in 2003. “It scores in several ways. The pay back time is shorter because we reduce waste, while at the same time increasing productivity by 25 per cent. Of course, it represents a major investment. However, in a family firm like ours where I am both a shareholder and an executive director, I have two compelling reasons to invest wisely. In choosing Sortex I made a good decision.”

Sommer Brothers Seed Co. of Pekin IL has also recently installed Sortex and Mark Sommer is delighted with the performance of his Z-1 colour sorter. “There are about 70-80 different corn seed hybrids and each has its own distinct, subtle colour variations. The Z-1 adapts perfectly to whatever variety is presented and offers a quality advantage unattainable with previous equipment.

“We are totally sold on colour sorters and have the reassurance that Sortex technology will not become obsolete in a few years. Our Z-1 saves us a great deal of money by eliminating waste – good product is not being rejected. They say that a penny saved is a penny earned – and we are saving lots! Our growth in the last ten years in both corn seed and soya bean volumes has increased by 250 per cent. It’s on the cards that we’ll be doing business with Sortex again.”

Kilshaw returned to London confident that the Sortex Z Anyware customer support system with its remote access capability will be vital in maximising profits for customers in the seed corn sector by maximising uptime and optimising machine performance. “Seed corn is such a high value product that it is essential to minimise the ‘good in reject product’ volume in order to maximise yields.  The return on investment can be quick and is justified the quantity of good grains a Sortex sorter is NOT throwing away.”

Kilshaw enthuses over Sortex’s Z-series ‘whiz-bang’ technology that deals more effectively with the higher defect-concentrated reject stream than any other sorter currently on the market. “Right now, an acceptable standard in the seed market is another company’s claim that, with a simultaneous defect stream re-sort, their 80 channel machine will get a 1 good to 2 bad, or, perhaps, 1 good to 3 bad in the final defect stream. This assumes the incoming defect level is five per cent or less. With our state of the art optics and ejectors we can claim confidently that with a simultaneous re-sort of the defect stream the Z-series delivers a 1 good to 5 bad at the five per cent or less incoming defect level.

“More good news is that with throughput ranges of between 160 and 170 bushels of corn per 21 channel module, at this defect level, a Z-4 delivers between 640 and 680 bu./hr. For every 100,000 bushel, it would take between 14 and 16, ten hour days or six to seven, twenty-four hour “days”.  Schoolboy arithmetic tells me that this would save a user about $36, 685 for each 100,000 bushels sorted, using a projected value of $55 per bushel, for good, saved seed corn, when comparing a 1:5 ratio to a 1:3 (good to bad).