Rural R and D for Profit: Easy-Open Oyster automation

Funded Activity Summary

Almost all of the 500 oyster farms in Australia are family farm operations. The annual GVP of the industry is not growing consistently and the number of farms is declining due to the devastation caused by the disease POMS in NSW estuaries. Research by the Seafood CRC showed that only 44% of Australians ever eat oysters and less than 4% eat them regularly. The days when oysters were an expensive delicacy are gone. Oysters are now a loss leader in many seafood outlets. To combat this decline many oyster growers are forming alliances to market their oysters direct to restaurants in Australia and Asia. These offerings are based on freshness and provenance. To deliver on both these promises, the oyster must be delivered to the restaurant live and unopened. Shucking must then be undertaken by an experienced person.

The difficulty in shucking oysters experienced by many people limits the demand for oysters. Most oysters are shucked by staff employed by wholesalers and sold in the half shell. All wholesalers report difficulty in maintaining shucking staff. Also, the eating experience of half shell oysters is inferior to that of freshly shucked oysters.

The easy-open oyster concept was designed to overcome these issues and to lift consumer demand for oysters, thereby enabling the industry to grow. This project aims to deliver at least a 15% premium on the price received by farmers for provenance-guaranteed Easy-Open oysters. In the longer term the desired outcome for oyster farmers is to increase both the volume and annual GVP of oyster sales in Australia.


Objectives:
1. To investigate the use of robotic and laser vision guidance technology to design an automatic system for the Easy-Open process that meets the required performance characteristics of speed, quality and cost effectiveness.
2. To manufacture and commission “Easy Open” Oyster processing machine, for evaluation by three oyster wholesalers.
3. T o have the system commercially manufactured and adopted by the industry.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 15-06-2016

End Date: 22-06-2018

Funding Scheme: Funding Scheme not available

Funding Amount: $458,814.84

Funder: Fisheries Research and Development Corporation

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

There are no FoR codes available for this funding activity

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

Automation | Consumer | Economic | Food processing | Labelling | Market opportunities | Plastic | Processing & packaging

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