A VICTORIAN fruit grading equipment manufacturer has been awarded the 2014 Australian Exporter of the Year Award.
GP Graders snared the overall award after being named the winner of the manufacturing category.
The business has a long history of excellence in the equipment export industry, dating back to 1963, when founder Geoff Payne began a small manufacturing and grading packaging machinery business to cater to local apple and stone fruit orchards.
Its AirJet cherry grader accounts for 85 per cent of its total sales check and is used by every major cherry packer in all leading markets.
The grader’s highly sophisticated camera technology categorises cherries according to size, colour, shape and defects.
This process allows cherries to be sorted based on their quality and priced for different markets.
The machine reduces human sorting by 60 per cent and increases sorting accuracy to 97.5pc.
GP Graders has customers in Canada, Chile, Greece, Turkey, the UK, the USA and mainland Europe.
The company’s service-oriented approach and investment in research and development have seen exports grow from 10pc to 75pc of total sales over the past decade.
In 2013–14, GP Graders installed the world’s largest cherry grading machine and packing line in California, which can process 24 tonnes of cherries per hour, a 200 per cent throughput increase on previous machines.
This product improvement contributed to record sales in North America during the year.
Speaking at the awards ceremony last November, Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb congratulated the company.
“Exporter of the year, GP Graders – from my home-state of Victoria – should be especially proud of the innovation and imagination they’ve demonstrated, in order to capture international attention for their machinery products,” Mr Robb said.
On accepting the award GP Graders director Stuart Payne said it was a great honour and testimony to the hard work the team has put into product innovation and customer service.
“We have been at the forefront of grading machinery technology for a long time and we make continuous improvements to technology ensuring that our technology surpasses any other machinery on the market,” Mr Payne said.
“The company continually out-competes its competitors because of our client-centric approach and investment in product development.”