Fruit Pitting Machine

Short answer: A fruit pitting machine removes the stone from dates, cherries, plums, apricots and similar fruit so the flesh can be sold whole, sliced, dried or made into paste. The fruit species and how even its size is decide the tooling, and your end product decides whether the fruit must stay whole or can be opened.

How it works

Fruit is fed from a hopper onto a vibrating tray or chain that places one piece in each cup. In a punch pitter, the cup carries the fruit under a pin that pushes the stone out through the bottom; the stone falls into one outlet and the pitted fruit is lifted off into another. Several lanes work side by side.

A roller pitter passes the fruit between profiled rollers that split or press the flesh away from the stone, which then drops through a gap. This leaves the fruit open, so it suits products that will be dried, sliced or made into paste rather than sold as whole fruit.

Dedicated machines combine these principles with tooling for a single fruit, such as dates or jujubes, to keep the stone removal reliable at higher speed.

Which configuration fits

Form	Suits	Watch out for
Positioned punch pitter	Whole pitted dates, cherries, olives, plums	Needs graded fruit; lower speed per lane
Roller pitter	Fruit for paste, slices or drying	Fruit is not kept whole
Dedicated multi-lane	High volume of one fruit and size range	Less flexible for other fruit

What we need from you to quote

• Fruit species and variety, and photos with a ruler for scale
• Size range after grading, and ripeness or moisture at pitting
• Whether the product must stay whole
• Acceptable broken fruit and residual stone rate
• Throughput measured on whole fruit input (kg/h), and hours per day
• Other fruit or sizes you plan to run later

Where it sits in a line

Pitting follows a fruit and vegetable washer and a fruit and vegetable sorter. Pitted fruit goes on to a hot-air dryer, a fruit and vegetable pulping line or packing. For dates, the pitter is usually part of a date processing line.