Jujubes are thin-skinned and easily damaged, while manual grading is slow and inaccurate. This article explains how Fstsort's roller grader uses "gradually increasing roller gaps" to achieve precision grading, reduce losses, and improve export grades.
The Global Jujube Market Is Accelerating
Jujubes are a major specialty fruit and trade commodity worldwide. According to market research, the global jujube market was valued at approximately $2.1 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $3.6 billion by 2034.
Export growth is even more striking. In 2025, Dali County in Shaanxi Province exported over 8,000 tonnes of jujubes, valued at over RMB 220 million—with Southeast Asian markets accounting for over 70% of total export volume. In 2025, Shaanxi jujubes were exported to Australia for the first time, marking a breakthrough—Dali is located in a fruit fly-free zone north of 33°N recognized by Australian authorities, eliminating the need for 14-day cold treatment and preserving fresh fruit flavor to the maximum extent.
This continued export expansion is pushing jujube growers and processors worldwide to rethink their post-harvest grading operations.
Jujube Sorting: Deceptively Simple, Surprisingly Complex
Challenge 1: Delicate fruit. Thin skin and crisp flesh make jujubes highly vulnerable to mechanical damage. Scratches and bruises from harvesting, handling, and grading lead to downgrades and shorter shelf life. Manual sorting is gentle but slow and inconsistent—unable to meet export buyers' size-uniformity requirements.
Challenge 2: Manual grading is slow and inaccurate. In many producing regions, grading is still done by eye. It is inefficient and error-prone; machine vision can achieve over 92% accuracy.
Challenge 3: Inconsistent sizing hurts pricing. International buyers demand uniform size and intact appearance. Mixing good and defective fruit directly dilutes value and premium pricing potential.
Roller Grader: A Simple Yet Ingenious Design
It is precisely in this market environment that Fstsort's roller grader was developed. The core design philosophy can be summed up in one sentence: replace human judgment with physical principles.
How it works: gradually increasing roller gaps
After entering the grading section, jujubes move along two conveyor belts equipped with numerous stainless steel roller pipes. The key design feature is this: the gaps between rollers gradually increase from the inlet to the outlet.
As jujubes move forward on the rollers, smaller ones fall through the smaller gaps naturally, medium-sized ones fall when the gaps widen to the right size, and the largest ones travel all the way to the end before dropping. The entire process requires no human intervention and no electronic sensors—it relies on the physical dimensions of the roller gaps, not on human eyes or experience.
Why is this design particularly friendly to jujubes?
Jujubes have thin skin and crisp flesh and cannot tolerate rough handling. The roller grader's advantages are precisely:
· No skin damage. Fstsort's roller grader is equipped with soft nylon bristle rollers that rotate on their own axis— jujubes roll forward gently on the rollers rather than being squeezed or pinched, minimizing damage to the fruit skin.
· No downtime. The machine runs continuously, with throughput far beyond manual labor—ideal for high-volume processing during peak export seasons.
· No errors. The physical dimensions of the gaps are fixed—no fatigue or lack of experience can cause mistakes, ensuring highly consistent sorting results batch after batch.
This design is built to last because it has virtually no wear-prone electronic components. For processors, this means lower maintenance costs and less unplanned downtime. The simpler the mechanical principle, the more reliably it performs under long-term, high-intensity operation.
From Grading to Complete Processing Solutions
Grading is just one link in jujube post-harvest processing. Fstsort offers complete jujube processing solutions covering from washing, drying, grading to weighing and packing—from roller graders to automatic box fill and weigh systems, from manual inspection tables to touch screen control, all modules can be flexibly configured based on fruit characteristics and target market requirements.
Fstsort's jujube grading and packing line is highly popular with Australian customers—we have supplied multiple lines to Australia, with customers reporting high efficiency, reliable performance, and excellent ROI.
Competition in the global jujube export market is intensifying. While China's jujube exports continue to grow in Southeast Asia, the successful entry into the Australian market marks a new chapter—the precision and efficiency of the sorting stage are becoming critical determinants of export competitiveness.
Want know more about jujube processing solutions, please see our product page of jujube grading & packing line→