ZTI receives over 1.2 Million Euros in JTF Funding
The Just Transition Fund (JTF) is an EU subsidy program for innovations contributing to the energy transition and to sustainable living and working environments. The company ZTI is seeking safe and efficient solutions for industrial processes that involve a lot of repetitive manual labor. This project aims to robotize the processing of fruits and vegetables, thereby reducing agricultural waste, among other benefits.
Robotics
Engineers at ZTI use the latest software systems to design machines that make fruit and vegetable processing safer, faster, more hygienic, and easier to maintain. The increased production achieved through fully automated orientation, detection, counting, weighing, and processing of delicate agricultural products makes the fruit and vegetable processing industries more future-proof. Robotics and AI reduce production loss. ZTI has its own workshop where innovative machines can be tested, validated, and demonstrated.
Technological Phases of Innovations
For over 30 years, ZTI has been developing and assembling machines. In the last 9 years, the focus has been on peeling, cutting, and coring fruits and vegetables using mechanical solutions. In parallel, ZTI is working on its own algorithms, robotics, vision, and AI to elevate these machines to a higher level, gaining a technological competitive advantage and maximizing the value of natural products.
Alderman of Heemskerk and member of the Regional Steering Committee JTF, Aad Schoorl, said: "It is interesting to know that technological innovations must go through various internationally recognized innovation phases: inventing, developing, demonstrating, and selling/installing. The goal of ZTI’s JTF project is to bring a compact cutting machine to market and develop 3 new machine variations for other types of fruits/vegetables, such as mangoes. It's great that a project focuses on marketing their innovation. This is also a wonderful project for the horticultural area around Heemskerk."
Sustainable Working Environment
With this project, ZTI focuses on transforming unhealthy repetitive work into process-responsible work by retraining 70 employees from the fruit and vegetable processing industries. Additionally, ZTI, an accredited training company, provides in-company training for 80 students.
JTF stands for Just Transition Fund and is an EU subsidy supported by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, the Province of North Holland, and the municipalities of Beverwijk, Castricum, Velsen, Heemskerk, and Uitgeest.
