Divider Select Optical Pre-Sorter for Potatoes and Onions by Flikweert Vision - Industrial-Grade Quality for Farm Operations

During potato and onion harvest, the biggest storage problems often start right in the field - soil clods, stones, plant residue, and other foreign material enter the crop flow. From there, they “travel” through the entire handling chain, creating multiple risks at once: bruising and mechanical damage to tubers and bulbs, a higher share of waste, faster spoilage in storage piles, and additional strain on both labor and equipment. Flikweert Vision’s new solution, the Divider Select optical pre-sorter, is designed specifically as this “first line of defense” for practical on-farm use.

What Is Divider Select and Why It Matters

Divider Select is a compact optical sorter (pre-sorter) engineered for potato and onion streams. Its primary job is to remove what should not continue into storage or further processing: stones, soil clods, unwanted contaminants, and the most severe product defects - before the main grading stage.

In real farm terms, Divider Select addresses three common operational needs:

1. Protecting crop quality during handling - fewer mechanical injuries, less contamination, and more consistent lot quality.
2. Reducing manual labor - less time spent on inspection tables and fewer subjective decisions.
3. Protecting downstream equipment - stones and hard clods are among the leading causes of unplanned downtime, conveyor wear, and damage to subsequent machines in the line.

The Idea: From Industrial Lines to Farm-Yard Practicality

Flikweert Vision is known for optical sorting solutions used by large packhouses and industrial processing lines. The original “industrial” Divider platform is recognized as a high-capacity machine with throughput around 120 t/h. In the updated product positioning, this heavy-duty class is typically associated with a “Pro” segment - essentially Divider Pro as the industrial variant.

By contrast, Divider Select was developed as a farm-oriented model: more compact, easier to integrate, and built around the same concept of industrial-grade optical analysis, but in a format suited to everyday agricultural practice.

Key Specifications That Matter on a Farm

For on-farm users, the decisive factors are not marketing claims but the “physics” of the machine - footprint, throughput, and compatibility with existing handling systems.

• Working width of Divider Select is approximately 1 meter, making it suitable for many farm setups and conveyor layouts without major rebuilding.
• Throughput is targeted at around up to 40 t/h, typically sufficient for farm-level harvesting and pre-storage handling flows.
• Placement in the line - the pre-sorter can be installed in an infeed or outfeed line (e.g., during crop intake or before storage/loading), where it removes the most problematic inclusions early.

This matters operationally: 40 t/h is high enough to avoid becoming a bottleneck for many farms, while still keeping the solution compact and economically sensible.

How Optical Pre-Sorting Works: Cameras, AI, and Ejection

Divider Select follows a standard optical-sorting architecture used in Flikweert Vision systems:

1. Even product distribution on a flat conveyor so each item is clearly visible to the system.
2. Industrial camera imaging captures the flow in real time with enough resolution to evaluate shape, color cues, and surface characteristics.
3. AI-based classification analyzes each object and decides whether it should remain in the marketable stream.
4. Physical separation mechanism (ejection fingers/pushers) removes unwanted objects - stones, clods, foreign materials, and a share of clearly defective items.

For the farm operator, this means sorting becomes a repeatable process with consistent decision logic from morning to evening - independent of staff fatigue and shift changes.

Why Potatoes and Onions Benefit Most

Potatoes and onions behave differently in a crop stream, but both are highly sensitive to foreign material and mechanical stress:

• Potatoes bruise easily and can suffer sub-skin damage. Stones and hard clods are major contributors to micro-injuries that later show up as rot and weight loss in storage.
• Onions are also vulnerable to damage and contamination. In addition to stones and clods, soft bulbs or off-grade fractions can reduce lot value and complicate further handling.

Pre-sorting at an early stage reduces the “chain reaction” - fewer injuries on the line, fewer infection sources in storage, and a cleaner stream for subsequent processing steps.

Practical Integration: Typical Use Scenarios

Divider Select is positioned as a solution for real-world agricultural practice - where lines are often configured “for the season,” fast commissioning matters, and overly complex settings are undesirable.

Common scenarios include:

• During harvest intake - remove stones/clods before the crop enters temporary storage or further handling.
• Before storage - improve lot cleanliness and reduce risks of self-heating and rot development.
• Before shipping - stabilize quality and reduce customer complaints related to contamination.

A key advantage is that the farm gains an “industrial” level of quality control without needing to build a full industrial packhouse.

The Economics: Where Payback Comes From

Return on investment in optical pre-sorting typically comes from several smaller effects that add up:

• Lower storage losses (less damage - fewer rots and write-offs).
• Reduced manual labor (fewer people on sorting tables or reallocation to other tasks).
• Less downtime (stones and hard contaminants often trigger stoppages and repairs).
• More consistent lot quality (potentially better pricing and fewer penalties/claims).

For farms with short, high-pressure harvest windows, the decisive benefit is often simple: getting through the season without quality breakdowns and without equipment disruptions.

Divider Select by Flikweert Vision is a practical step toward making optical sorting a standard not only for large sorting centers but also for farm-level operations. With a compact footprint (about a 1-meter working width), throughput up to around 40 t/h, and a focus on early-stage pre-sorting, it offers potato and onion producers a real tool to control quality from the first meters of the conveyor belt - long before problems enter storage or spread across the entire batch.