Wide Bay Sort
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Inside Wide Bay Sort: The Office Team’s Tour of Macadamia Processing

The office team recently had the opportunity to visit Wide Bay Sort, where Andrew provided an in-depth tour of the facility. This state-of-the-art processing centre plays a crucial role in receiving, cleaning, drying, and sorting macadamia nuts before they move further along the supply chain.

For those who couldn’t attend or hear everything clearly on the day, here’s a breakdown of the key insights from the tour.

Receiving & Initial Cleaning: Efficient Handling of Large Volumes

Unlike BundySort, which uses exterior hoppers, Wide Bay Sort features two large indoor hoppers, each capable of holding 35 tonnes of receivable nut, giving the facility a total indoor storage capacity of 70 tonnes. This design allows for efficient unloading, with trucks driving directly over a grain-style conveyor system that quickly transports nuts into the hoppers.

The system processes incoming nuts at 60 tonnes per hour, ensuring rapid intake. Before nuts even reach the hoppers, they pass through stick walkers and aspirators, which remove larger debris such as leaves, twigs, and sticks. This pre-cleaning step significantly reduces contamination before the nuts enter the primary cleaning process.

Dehusking & Secondary Cleaning: Preparing the Nuts for Drying

Once inside, nuts move through a cleaning and dehusking system that operates at 12 tonnes per hour. The multi-step process ensures that the nuts are free of unwanted materials before drying:

  • Slope belts help separate debris from round nuts using gravity.
  • Trommels filter out undersized nuts and unwanted particles.
  • Aspirators remove fine dust and lightweight materials.
  • Colour sorting on the receiver line ensures that any nuts still containing husk are redirected for additional dehusking.
  • Batch weighing and sampling allow for real-time tracking of waste percentages and processing efficiency.

This combination of mechanical and automated processes helps maintain product quality while maximising throughput.

Drying Process: Advanced Heat Exchange System

Drying is a critical stage in macadamia processing, ensuring nuts reach the optimal moisture content for storage and transport. Wide Bay Sort employs a single drying room with an innovative heat pump system. This system operates similarly to an air conditioner but is far more efficient:

  • Hot water is heated using energy-efficient heat pumps and circulated through heat exchangers beneath the drying bins.
  • The entire drying system is fully sealed, meaning all air is pulled through the heat exchangers before entering the fans, ensuring consistent heat distribution.
  • Moisture is exhausted through specially designed shrouds, preventing humidity buildup and improving drying efficiency.

By utilising the roof cavity to capture and reuse natural heat, the facility maximises energy efficiency while maintaining precise drying conditions.

Construction & System Design: Early Facility Development

During the facility’s construction, several key systems were put in place to optimise drying and efficiency. The curing bins were carefully designed with plenum decks that create an air gap beneath the nuts, allowing for uniform airflow. The facility also integrated easy let-down systems, which ensure that nuts are gently deposited onto the plenum, preventing damage and maintaining quality.

Around the Farms Wide Bay Sort by Macadamia Farm Management

The heating system combines multiple sources of energy efficiency:

  • Heat from the roof space is captured and used to supplement drying during the day.
  • At night, heat pumps take over, ensuring consistent temperature and humidity levels.
  • Fully automated air circulation ensures that heat exchangers efficiently regulate airflow through the drying bins.

These innovations were critical in setting up Wide Bay Sort as a leading-edge processing centre with a strong focus on sustainability and efficiency.

Sorting, Batch Weighing & Dispatching: Full Traceability

After drying, the nuts return to the sorting process before final dispatch. Unlike BundySort, which uses silos for post-drying storage, Wide Bay Sort cycles nuts back into different bins within the drying room for storage until sorting.

Key sorting and dispatching steps include:

  • Nuts are transferred to sorting conveyors for final cleaning and quality control.
  • The system can simultaneously receive, sort, dispatch, and size nuts, making it highly efficient.
  • Batch weights and quality samples are recorded at multiple stages to maintain full traceability.
  • Waste materials are collected via a dedicated conveyor system, consolidated in a waste gantry, and disposed of efficiently.
  • A bulk dispatch system allows sorted nuts to be loaded directly into trucks for transport to processors such as APM.

The ability to handle multiple processes simultaneously makes Wide Bay Sort an incredibly complex yet efficient facility, ensuring that macadamias meet stringent quality standards before reaching buyers.

Innovations & Challenges: Improving Efficiency

Wide Bay Sort features several technological advancements that improve processing efficiency:

  • Automated sorting & pneumatic control: The facility’s sorting system is fully electric over pneumatic, meaning it can process multiple batches at once while ensuring precise sorting and tracking.
  • Independent lab samples: Quality samples are sent to independent labs to verify nut characteristics and ensure fairness in pricing for growers.
  • Shredding & composting potential: While the facility invested in a nut shredder to repurpose waste into compost, challenges such as unwanted rock contamination have slowed its implementation.

The Bigger Picture: Supporting the Macadamia Industry

Like BundySort, Wide Bay Sort operates at the farm level, processing field-collected macadamias into a clean, sorted, and dried product ready for sale. After processing, the nuts are shipped to APM or other buyers, where they undergo further refinement before reaching consumers.

By integrating cutting-edge sorting technology, energy-efficient drying solutions, and full traceability systems, Wide Bay Sort ensures that every batch of macadamias is processed to the highest standards.

Watch the Tour

For a closer look at the facility and its operations, check out the video below.

Wide Bay Sort exemplifies the continuous improvements being made in macadamia processing, ensuring efficiency, sustainability, and high-quality output for the industry.

Building Wide Bay Sort: A Look Back at Its Construction

During the early stages of Wide Bay Sort’s construction, a video was recorded showcasing the development of key systems that would later optimise the facility’s efficiency. This footage highlights the installation of the curing bins, plenum decks, and advanced heat exchange system, demonstrating how airflow and temperature control were engineered to ensure optimal drying conditions. Watch the video below for a glimpse into the facility’s setup before it became fully operational.

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