In 1976, Wayne Earl, a graduate of Stanford University with an MBA in Industrial Engineering, was employed by Accurex. The company asked him to join Icore to develop the first color sorter to be mounted on a Johnson Farm Machinery tomato harvester. After several years of perfecting the design, Earl purchased the rights to the tomato sorter technology from Icore.

Earl founded Woodside Electronics (WECO) in 1982 in Mountain View, CA, and within a few years moved the company to Woodland, CA to be closer to Johnson Farm Machinery. A turning point occurred in 1990 when the first Johnson tomato harvesters were sent to Spain with WECO’s sorter, the Golden Streak. A proven success, the WECO sorter was mounted on hundreds of harvesters in a very short time, greatly reducing manual labor.

Wanting to broaden his product line to include other fruits and nuts, Earl developed Hi-Res Optical Sorting Technology in 1999 and deployed it for use in the walnut huller industry. This technology was successful in removing the adhering hull and black walnuts along with foreign material. Taking it a step further, Xres Camera Technology was developed in 2003 for in-shell walnut sorting. Today, WECO is the leading supplier of sorting and automation equipment to walnut huller/dehydrators, including Webster Walnut of Australia.

Don Douglas purchased WECO in 2004 from Mr. Earl. His first project to advance the product line was the development of a new tomato sorter to replace the Golden Streak. The new TomatoTek offers the same effectiveness as the Golden Streak while adding several special features, including RFID, GPS, wireless remote control, driver’s console, and data logging and transmission. Additionally, the new sorter was installed 4 inches farther from the flow of the product, which greatly reduced the amount of cleaning required.

In 2005, the first BerryTek sorters using the Xres technology camera system were developed to sort out green and red berries for blueberry packers. A year later, WECO developed the world’s first two-view soft sorter for the blueberry industry. This new sorter analyzed 100% more area of the fruit, vastly improving pack-out quality and increasing throughput.

With greater improvements achievable from the ever-changing technology, WECO was quickly able to add the Impulse soft sorter to its already successful line of machinery. The Impulse was built with the same durability that distinguishes all WECO sorters, but manufactured with an FDA-approved, antimicrobial resin. Each dynamic sensor is individually manufactured with this antimicrobial resin, making the soft sorter the safest of its kind in the industry.

In 2010, WECO began testing that led to the development of the WineGrapeTek, which helps wineries remove material other than grapes (MOG) after the de-stemming process. This piece of equipment reduces or even eliminates the need for manual hand labor while increasing throughput. WineGrapeTek was designed to be easy to understand and operate and employs intuitive controls and a touch-screen interface refined over the past 30 years.

In 2014, WECO introduced the ProcessTek line for the blueberry processing industry. WECO recently introduced the VibeTek line of sorters for frozen blueberries and also introduced Chromax Camera Technology to the blueberry and tomato divisions.

WECO is looking forward to proudly celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2022, with satisfied customers throughout the world and the best team of engineers and technicians dedicated to continually improving our technology.

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