Hazelnut orchards that grow hazelnuts can earn money by selling hazelnuts in shells or processing them into kernels.
For the sale of hazelnuts in shells, farmers often join together to form large batches and sell nuts under contracts. Hazelnuts in shells can also be supplied to grocery networks or small grocery stores and sold to processors, or other orchards engaged in processing.
Processing hazelnuts into kernels increases the orchard’s profit, as the kernel has a much higher value. Therefore, when receiving regular harvests, farmers begin to think about equipment for processing.
Depending on the volume of hazelnuts, different types of equipment are used.
Very small volumes can be processed with manual nutcrackers. Their advantage is that it is possible to manually adjust the degree of compression and obtain the maximum amount of the whole kernel.
If the volumes are larger and manual processing becomes a problem, household electric nutcrackers are used. They have a roller-cracking principle. With calibrated hazelnuts, they also provide a high output of the whole kernel from hazelnuts – up to 90%. After the nutcracker, the sorting of hazelnut kernels from shells is done manually or in an aspiration column.
The equipment set – Optima 2 electric nutcracker (70 kg/h) i aspiration column (100 kg/h) – is the optimal set for processing small volumes of hazelnuts. The equipment performs the main processes and frees from manual labor by 80%.
For the processing of industrial volumes, more productive equipment is used, and separate equipment is installed for each process. Thus, the basic set for processing hazelnuts in industrial volumes consists of a hazelnut calibrator in shells, an industrial nutcracker for hazelnuts, a vibration sieve, and an aspiration for sorting cracked nuts.
A linear or drum calibrator sorts hazelnuts by size in their shells, allowing the nutcracker to be adjusted to the size of the nutcracker and increase the yield of whole kernels.
For the processing of hazelnuts in industrial orchards and processing plants used the line for processing hazelnuts (200 kg/hour). This is one piece of equipment, which includes a conveyor with a hopper, a drum nutcracker, and a vibrating screen with an installed aspiration system.
Drum-type nutcracker carefully breaks down large volumes of hazelnuts and allows up to 90% of the whole kernel to be obtained.
After cracking, the hazelnuts require sorting of the kernel from the shell and sorting the kernel into fractions – whole kernels and separately crushed ones. The sorting is done on a vibrating screen with aspiration.
As a result of the line’s operation, up to 200 kg of hazelnuts per hour can be processed. The line can be equipped according to individual volumes and needs.