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Family farm’s new scale systems eliminate excess product giveaway

New scales yield ROI in a week by avoiding overfilling sweet potatoes and watermelons. For Corey Farms, the subsequent savings are no small potatoes.

New scales yield ROI in a week by avoiding overfilling sweet potatoes and watermelons. For Corey Farms, the subsequent savings are no small potatoes.
New scales yield ROI in a week by avoiding overfilling sweet potatoes and watermelons. For Corey Farms, the subsequent savings are no small potatoes.

When Corey Farms established its own packing facility after years of outsourcing the packaging of its sweet potatoes and watermelons to a local company, they were faced with some serious weighing challenges. The Robersonville, North Carolina farm was using a simple (but inaccurate) “eyeballing” method to fill boxes.

To ensure it did not short its customers, it wound up overfilling the boxes and shorting itself instead. After selecting new scales, Corey Farms has a packing process that provides good value to customers while ensuring they do not give away their product. They estimate they paid for the cost of the scale in about a week by avoiding overfilling boxes. And that level of savings is no small potatoes.

Corey Farms is a 5th-generation family-run farming operation. Its Corey Produce branch of the company grows sweet potatoes and watermelons. About 75% of the sweet potatoes are sold for export, primarily to the Netherlands, with 25% sold to domestic grocery chains such as Walmart, Sam’s Club, Foodline, BJs, and Costco.

Needs for accurate weighing

Corey Produce opened its new packing facility last summer. facility ships in two box sizes: a 40-lb carton box and a 500 kilogram (1,100-lb) box.

Lee Corey, who manages the produce side of the business, explains that he turned to Fairbanks Scales for recommendations on which scales would be most effective for their operations. Corey Produce had worked with Fairbanks for years for scales and other equipment used in the tobacco part of their business.

The new packing facility has a bulk line where the sweet potatoes are washed, graded, and sized. As they are sized, workers fill up the 40-lb carton boxes, “guess-timating” their weight and then putting on the lid.

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