Dried Fruit Processing Plant: Planning a Dried Fruit and Fruit Chips Factory

Short answer: A dried fruit processing plant washes, sorts and cuts fresh fruit, dries it to a stable moisture level, then cools, weighs and packs it before it can pick up moisture again. The dryer is the bottleneck, so a plant is sized from the fresh fruit you can buy per day and the drying ratio of each fruit, and the drying method (hot air or freeze-drying) decides most of the investment, energy use and building layout.

This page is for people planning a factory or adding dried fruit to an existing business. If you only need one machine, the dried fruit processing line page and the individual equipment pages go into the details of each unit.

What a dried fruit plant consists of

Every plant, from a small farm-gate unit to an export factory, has the same three parts:

1. Preparation: receiving, washing, sorting, peeling, pitting or coring, and slicing or dicing. This is where most labour and most yield loss sit.
2. Drying: the dryer and its heat source, plus any pre-treatment such as blanching, dipping or sugar infusion.
3. Cooling and packing: cooling the dried product, final inspection, weighing, packing and metal detection, in a room kept dry and clean.

Around them sit raw material storage (often chilled), a heat or steam supply, water treatment, a finished goods store and a small lab for moisture checks.

Process route and key machines

Station	Purpose	Key machine
Washing	Remove soil, leaves and surface dirt before cutting	Fruit and vegetable washer
Sorting	Remove damaged, rotten or under-ripe fruit; grade by size	Fruit and vegetable sorter
Peeling (where needed)	Remove skin from roots and some fruit	Brush washer and peeler
Pitting or coring	Remove stones, pits or cores	Fruit pitting machine
Cutting	Slices, cubes or strips of even thickness so they dry evenly	Vegetable cutting machine
Pre-treatment	Blanching or dipping to protect colour and texture	Blanching and cooling line
Surface water removal	Remove free water before the dryer	Air knife dewatering machine
Drying, hot air	Belt, tray or chamber drying for chewy fruit and chips	Hot air dryer
Drying, freeze	Crisp freeze-dried fruit with shape and colour kept	Freeze dryer
Weighing and packing	Accurate portions into bags or pouches	Multihead weigher, premade pouch packing machine
Inspection	Detect metal and check pack weight	Food metal detector, in-line checkweigher

Not every fruit needs every station. Grapes and berries skip cutting; dates need pitting and sometimes their own route (see the date processing line); vegetable chips may need blanching where fruit does not.

How to size the plant

The most common planning error is mixing up raw input and finished output. A plant described as “1 tonne per hour” could mean one tonne of fresh fruit going in or one tonne of dried product coming out, and the difference can be several times over.

Work through it in this order:

1. Fix the finished product: fruit, cut shape, final moisture and pack size. The FAO technical sheet on dried fruit gives final moisture of roughly 10–15 % for conventionally dried fruit, with semi-moist products such as raisins kept higher; your target market and texture decide the exact figure.
2. Measure the drying ratio for each fruit in trials: how many kilograms of fresh fruit (after trimming) give one kilogram of finished product.
3. Calculate the daily fresh fruit load: finished output target × drying ratio, plus preparation losses (peel, stones, rejects).
4. Size the dryer first, using drying time per batch or belt residence time. The dryer is nearly always the slowest and most expensive station.
5. Size preparation and packing around the dryer, with buffer time for loading, unloading and cleaning.

Seasonality matters. If fruit arrives in a six-week harvest, either the dryers must handle the peak, or you need cold storage (or frozen storage for freeze-drying) to spread the load. Plants that dry several fruits across the year use their dryers far better than single-fruit plants.

Hot-air or freeze-drying?

Route	Suits	Watch out for
Hot-air belt or tray dryer	Chewy dried mango, apple rings, apricots, many vegetable chips	Even slice thickness and loading; colour change at high temperature
Heat-pump dryer	Similar products where energy cost or low-temperature drying matters	Longer drying times; check capacity at your climate
Freeze dryer	Crisp, premium fruit chips and powders, strawberries, durian, yogurt bites	Batch process, long cycles, high energy use; fruit is frozen before loading

The choice also changes the building. Freeze-drying needs freezing capacity before the dryer, a vacuum and refrigeration system, and a dry packing room because freeze-dried fruit absorbs moisture almost immediately.

Utilities and building

Plan these before you finalise the layout:

• Heat for drying: electricity, steam, natural gas, biomass or heat pump. The local price of energy often decides the dryer type.
• Water and drainage for washing, with filtration and sediment handling. Peel and stones need a waste route.
• Power for refrigeration and vacuum pumps if you freeze-dry.
• Separation of wet and dry areas. Washing and cutting are wet; packing must be dry and clean. Hygienic design guidance such as the EHEDG guidelines is a useful reference for floors, drains and equipment layout.
• Humidity control in the packing room and finished goods store. The FAO sheet advises packing straight after drying in moisture-proof material because dried fruit takes up water from the air.

Supply levels: single machine to turnkey

You can buy what you need and no more:

• Single machine: for example, a dryer to add to your existing preparation area. You confirm feed method, power and cleaning.
• Section: for example, preparation from washer to cutter, or packing from weigher to metal detector, with conveyors and controls inside the section.
• Complete line: process layout, equipment list, line controls, test run and hand-over.
• Turnkey project: the complete line plus installation, commissioning, training and acceptance runs. See turnkey projects for how responsibilities are split between supplier and buyer.

What drives the cost

We do not publish plant prices, because two “dried fruit plants” can differ by an order of magnitude. The main drivers are:

• Drying method and dryer capacity (the largest single item in most plants)
• Number of fruits and cut shapes, and how much preparation is automated versus manual
• Heat source and energy recovery
• Packing format: bulk cartons are cheap; retail pouches with weighers, nitrogen flushing and checkweighers cost more
• Stainless steel scope, hygiene level and cleaning systems
• Installation, civil works and utilities on your side

Common mistakes

• Sizing the dryer from a finished-output target without testing the drying ratio of your fruit.
• Buying preparation equipment that runs much faster than the dryer can absorb, so cut fruit waits and browns.
• Uneven slicing, which leaves some pieces wet while others overdry.
• Packing in a humid room or leaving dried fruit uncovered between dryer and packer.
• Ignoring seasonality: a dryer that is idle ten months a year rarely pays back.

What to send us for a quotation

• Fruits or vegetables, variety, and photos of typical incoming fruit
• Finished product: cut shape, chewy or crisp, target moisture, any sugar or coating
• Target output in kg/h of finished product and expected fresh fruit input, hours per day, shifts
• Harvest season length and whether you plan cold or frozen storage
• Preferred heat source and the energy available on site (power, steam, gas)
• Packaging: bag or pouch type, net weight per pack, nitrogen flushing, metal detection
• Building plan or dimensions, ceiling height and drainage
• Which sections you want from us, and which you already have
• Samples for trials, where possible

With this information our engineers can propose a route, a dryer size and a layout, and tell you which points need trials before the design is frozen.