Process - Usta Food Industry Agricultural

Process

The most delicious apricots are produced in the region of Malatya, Turkey. Due to the climatic conditions and geographical, charecteris ties of the region, they are offered as the most suitable dried fruit for human health.

Harvesting takes place in July, apricots are then layed on blankets to dry under strong sun rays, which is a process being used for 3000 years. After this process, the dried apricots are kept in fully closed rooms where they exposed to sulphur fumes in order to kill all insects and noxious bacterias and also to get their beautiful golden yellow orange color.

The aptricots are then sun-dried for another 3-4 days, and which is followed by removal of foreign particles manually, by the workers they are put in white cotton bags.

Purchasing Phylosphy:
Raw materials are purchased from the producers directly by considering the region, age of trees, position of the removal of pits and physical properties. Sulphur Level Control (SLC) and Humidity Level Cotrol (HLC) are done during purchasing.

The raw materials are classified in our Malatya factory and transported to our Izmir Factory in big plastic trays.

Washing is done by means of special machines made of stainless steel. Later, the apricots are placed on the large plates and dried in the furnace to reach a requested humidity level. The next procedure is classification which is performed on vibrating screens. Theese screens are desigred based on according the demands.

3 stages of cleaning by knives on the table.

Final (extra) control on the lighted conveyor.

The apricots are usually put in to boxes of 12,5 kg. or 5 kg. and prepared to be sent all over the world.

After pre-packing by means of hand in cello bags, styrofoam plates, wooden boxes and carton boxes of 200 grs, 250 grs, 500 grs and 1000 grs. are prepared by means of computer controlled automatic machines.

Quality Assurance;
The quality control has been done at every stage of process by checking Sulphur level, Humidity level, uniformity in colors and sizes. After packing, Sulphur level and humidity level are controlled by using randomly chosen goods that have been loaded. A part of the samples is held by our exporting department together with the Quality Control Forms fulfilled by QAD, which direcly reports to the General Manager.

The goods are properly loaded to the container after fumigation by our loading team.