Designing Accumulation Systems for Fruit Palletizing

Trever Hofman & Matt Fitzgerald | 18 June 2025

For fruit growers and packers, every season brings pressure: move product quickly, protect quality, and meet demand without breaking the line or damaging the fruit. Whether you're building a new facility or enhancing an existing one, designing the right accumulation system is key to keeping palletizing operations running smoothly.

In facilities processing apples, citrus, or stone fruits, accumulation plays a critical — but sometimes underestimated — role in protecting throughput and product integrity. Below, we explore key strategies for designing systems that handle fragile fruit with care, based on what we've seen in real-world fruit packing facilities.

Why Accumulation Systems Are Critical in Fruit Packing Lines

Accumulation zones act as a buffer between upstream processes (sorting, washing, packing) and downstream palletizers. Without them, even a brief stoppage — such as a palletizer reset — can ripple back through the system, shutting down upstream equipment and risk bruising or damaging product. With the right accumulation setup, facilities can maintain continuous flow, safeguard product quality, and reduce costly downtime.

For growers operating in existing facilities, accumulation can also serve as a practical entry point for phased automation. It allows you to build on current infrastructure while creating flexibility for future system upgrades.

5 Key Design Considerations For Fruit Palletizing Accumulation

1. Gentle Handling for Delicate Produce
Your fruit is your brand — and it needs to arrive without bruising or damage. Soft-touch sorters, zero-pressure accumulation (ZPA) conveyors, and belt-over-roller systems with intelligent gapping help reduce contact and eliminate back pressure. These technologies work together to preserve the integrity of both the fruit and its packaging.

2. Matching Speed with Real-World Flow
Packing lines can run at 60 — 120 cartons per minute. During brief palletizer stops, your accumulation system needs enough buffer to prevent backups. A best practice is to design single-SKU lanes with capacity for at least 1.5 pallets per line. This buffer accommodates uneven flow, prevents upstream halts and minimizes changeover downtime.

3. Accommodating Packaging Variety
Reusable plastic containers (RPCs), corrugated boxes, and other bulk containers vary in shape and stability. Lightweight or unstable packs may need high-friction sorters, side rails, or product guides to ensure product handling. Fruit packers handle diverse case types and weights, requiring carefully selected conveyors to ensure precise sorting, smooth accumulation, and accurate release of cases.

4. Seamless System Integration
Today’s accumulation systems don’t operate in a vacuum. Integrated warehouse control systems (WCS) can manage flow, reduce operator guesswork, and provide insights for grower reporting and maintenance planning. Especially in facilities with a mix of manual and automated processes, this layer of control is key to keeping the system responsive and future ready.

5. Maximizing Efficiency and ROI

In the competitive produce industry, uptime and quality drive profitability. A robust accumulation system reduces downtime, protects delicate fruit and packaging, and optimizes throughput.

Proven in the Field: Supporting Fruit Growers and Packers

Our experience in fragile fruit palletizing is reflected in successful system integration projects with leading producers like CPC International and McDougall & Sons and demonstrate our deep understanding of produce logistics and our ability to deliver tailored automation for our customers.

CPC International, a privately owned, family-run fruit wholesaler, exports a wide range of apple varieties to markets around the world. Facing rising labor challenges and the need to boost throughput, CPC set out to modernize its operations with a more efficient packing model. The objective: consolidate three separate packing lines into a single, streamlined system capable of handling greater volume and product variety. The result: an automated solution that tripled production rates while maintaining staffing levels and enabling efficient, uniform handling of 40 to 60 SKUs per variety.

McDougall & Sons, a fourth-generation, family-owned grower and distributor based in Wenatchee, WA, specializes in cherries and other tree fruits. To keep up with demand during peak season, they needed to boost cherry processing speeds, better manage production capacity across two cherry lines, and improve the accuracy and efficiency of data collection and reporting. The result: a high-performance automated material handling system that processes cartons at twice the speed of their previous setup, reduces reliance on manual labor, and delivers 99.9% accuracy in data tracking.

Ready to Improve Your Fruit Palletizing Line?

Author: Matt Fitzgerald, Trever Hofman