New Product Design Opportunity

Here I am not talking about the software product but a machinery/mechanical product. (Areca skinning machine)

Let me give some background information before explaining the problem.

Arecanut (Betel Nut) is a commercial crop grown in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and some parts of North Eastern states of India and even in some other countries. It’s also commonly known as Adike (Kannada), Supari (Hindi), Pakku (Tamil). In spite of this being a commercial crop, all the processing part is still done manually at each stage. I will talk about the processing part some other time but to understand the problem or the product design opportunity, let me explain the process in brief. (Other part of this process also needs different products)

This Areca bunches are picked from the areca tree and then it is separated from the thick outer skin to get the areca nut which is inside. This is boiled in natural areca extract colour and then dried in sun for 6-7 days before selling it in whole sale market. Separating the areca nut from its skin is most tedious and time consuming task. Till date it’s mostly done by skilled labors and its becoming very hard to get people in to this job. So, if some can invent/design some kind of machinery product which can separate the Areca nut from its skin it would be great.

There have been some attempts (and even working machine) to do this job but it’s not very successful. Reason for this is there are various tricky requirements in this process and some really good designer and problem solving skill is required to make this product a success. (I am not taking away any credits from who have already made the first efforts on this)

Following are some points or requirements in short:

• The machine should be able to separate the Areca nut from its hard skin.
• This Areca will be in various sizes and machine should be able to handle this properly.
• These seeds will be soft, hard and very hard depending on the age of that seed. Machine should be able to determine this or at lease able to handle it well with out damaging the seed.
• Machine should be able to cut these seeds in to half. (this has to be in a particular angle)
• Machine should be able to cut at lest of 100 Kgs per day minimum.
• Machine should be easy to maintain and operate with minimum supervision.
• Machine should be able to run on electricity or any other alternative energy source like petrol/ diesel.

Some more photographs and existing practice of this areca process is available here.

Any entrepreneur minded designers listening to this interesting challenge?