Utva makes hazelnut cracking machine

When you want to eat few hazelnuts, it is not a problem to crack them. But if you want to crack tens of tonnes of hazelnuts, that could be a problem.

Workers of Utva, once at work on the production of airplane parts, have designed a unique hazelnut cracker in association with Milan Grubanov from Pancevo, graduate agricultural engineer and owner of a hazelnut plantation.

Unlike other crackers, which require hazelnuts to be classified before being cracked, this machine uses a system of rollers to first classify hazelnuts and then cracks them at the speed of 100 kg per hour.

Such automatic hazelnut cracking may be a key advantage of hazelnuts from Serbia over the imported ones. About 95% of hazelnuts used by the domestic confectionery industry are imported from Turkey.

- We have to join forces to offer great amounts of hazelnuts, and the hazelnuts we produce are of excellent quality - almost organic - says Grubanov.