Abstract: A fruit refrigerating device includes a cylindrical hopper receiving fruits and provided with an axially disposed rotatable worm which moves the fruits through the hopper and a cooling unit for cooling a liquid which fills the hopper and cools the fruits. An automatic depitting machine is connected to the cylindrical hopper for receiving chilled fruits therefrom and depitting the fruits. The fruit receiving hopper has two spaced-apart nozzles, through one of which fruits are fed into the hopper, and the other of which serves to discharge the fruits from the hopper and is connected to a hopper of the automatic depitting machine. Control elements are provided in the fruit refrigerating device to control the level of fruits in the fruit feeding nozzle to prevent feeding of fruits into the cylindrical hopper when the fruit level in the feeding nozzle attains its maximal value.

Abstract: Olives from which the pits have already been removed are deposited on the upward-sloping carrying run of an endless conveyor which is made of a succession of rollers mounted to chains entrained about sprockets. The rollers have flexible disk-like fins of progressively increasing and decreasing diameter from fin to fin so that the olives tend to settle into pockets and orient with their lengths crosswise of the belt as the rollers are rotated. The belt conveys the olives into a shaft of slicing disks. Olive slices are received between slicing disks and an assisting roller pushes in the remainder of any olive only partially sliced through, except that contact of the slicing disks with any pit still contained in an olive pushes that olive more deeply into a respective inter-roller pocket by flexing the respective roller fins. At separate locations along the conveyor, a comb pulls the olive slices out from between the slicing disks, and the pocket-entrapped pit-containing olives are dislodged.

Abstract: The machine for pitting olives and for stuffing the pitted olives with an edible paste, such as anchovy paste, a plurality of axially opening bonnets are arranged in a circle for rotation about an axis through a succession of stations. At a first station, a pit-containing olive is placed in each bonnet and held there by a fastening bush. Subsequently, the pit with an adhered tapin is punched from the olive; the pit is severed from the tapin and only the tapin is retained. As the pitted olive is rotated to a further station, a succession of orifices of a nozzle connected to an injector for stuffing paste is temporarily opened to the olive cavity. Then a gelification agent is applied to the paste contained in the olive, the saved tapin is restored to the olive as a cavity closure, and the fastening bush is withdrawn, freeing the stuffed olive from the machine.

Abstract: Fruit, which may be oblong fruit such as olives, are mechanically sorted into two separate vessels, depending on whether they are, or are not individually thick enough to be clamped between a reciprocating head and a plate, while the head and plate rotate about a drum axis at a downstream end of a carrying run of an endless conveyor for the fruit. The clamped (oversized) fruit are carried further about the periphery of the drum than are the non-clamped (undersized) fruit, allowing these two classes of fruit to be collected separately. In a preferred embodiment, the fruit are individually deposited on the conveyor and subjected to common orientation before passing between the reciprocating head and the plate.