PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS OF TURKISH SULTANAS:

DESCRIPTION AND PROCESSING:

Sultanas are dried seedless grapes of Vitis Vinifera L. variety. The grapes are sun dried after washing in the vineyard. They are delivered to a packing plant in bulk. Quality control plays an important part once the raisins are at the plant. Before the raisins are unloaded from their vehicles, strict standards must be met to ensure each lot of raisins are free of mold, pests and other imperfections.

Next the raisins are “processed”. They are poured into a hopper, which feeds onto a series of conveyor belts, sieves and aspirators, that remove loose stems, chaff or lightweight fruits while they are size graded. Then the fruits are throughly washed two times in pure water. After resting period of at least 24 hours, the sultanas are riddled a second time, dressed in vegetable oil.

The raisins then move past a sophisticated laser sorter that uses light beams and a computer to determine if anything other than raisins is passing through the stream. If the computer determines something isn’t a raisin, it instantly send a small burst of air down to knock the material out of the stream into a trough below, all at incredibly high speeds.

Hand inspections are done throughout the packaging process by qualified workers and metal detection to make the raisins cleanest, high quality raisins in the world.

PROPERTIES :

Origin: Turkey

Appearance: composed of berries with the general appearance of the representative type

Taste: typical raisin taste without any foreign taste

Smell: typical raisin aroma without any foreign smell or off-odour

Consistency: firm,not sticky,free-flowing

Packaging: the cardboard should be clean and strong, the polyethylene bag shouldn't be dirty and torn, the products are packed in cardboard boxes with inner polyliner and the cartons are sealed with tape

Transport and Storage Coditions: packed raisins should not be exposed to rain or sun, the carton packages should not be stowed to cause any deformation to each other, maximum 9 cartons should be stowed on top of each other incase the packed products are stored on palets. Storage should be in dry and clean conditions under temperature of 4 – 17C for 18 MONTHS. Packed materials should not be stored more than 35 days at temperature over 30° C