Walnut Kernel Processing Machines for Churchkhela, Sujukh & Cevizli Sucuk

A churchkhela, sujukh or cevizli sucuk is judged by what is inside it. One dark, mouldy or rancid kernel spoils the whole piece; a shell fragment is a food-safety complaint; a string of mismatched halves and quarters looks uneven after dipping. Producers therefore sort kernels by hand under lamps before threading — slow work that depends on the eyes of the sorter and the hour of the shift.

As Georgian and Turkish producers have grown from courtyard batches to enterprises making thousands of pieces a day for export, kernel inspection has become the step that limits both output and consistency.

DOKTEK's vision platform images each kernel individually and classifies it: colour class (light, amber, dark), surface mould and dark spots, shrivelled or immature kernels, adhering membrane, shell fragments and foreign material, and size and shape. Kernels are then separated by class with robotic pick-and-place or pneumatic rejection, depending on the throughput and the number of output classes the line needs.

Walnut kernels are irregular, brittle and mixed in orientation — the same difficulty DOKTEK's robotic sorting handles on dried apricots and dried figs. The model is trained on the customer's own kernels and lots; no detection rate is published before that validation.

For threaded products the grade matters as much as the quality: whole halves make the premium string, quarters the standard one, and small pieces go to other products. The vision system separates halves from quarters and pieces in the same pass as the quality inspection, so the threading station receives a uniform grade.

After inspection, kernels are pierced and threaded onto string — still the most manual step in production. DOKTEK is engineering an automatic walnut piercing and threading machine for exactly that step; it is an engineering project under validation, described honestly on its own page, with no capacity published yet.

The same threaded-walnut sweet is made across the Caucasus, Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean under different names: churchkhela (ჩურჩხელა) in Georgia, where it is a national product; sujukh or sharots (սուջուխ, շարոց) in Armenia; soutzoukos (σουτζούκος) in Cyprus and soutzouki in Greece, often with almonds; cevizli sucuk, köme and pestil köme in Türkiye, especially around Kahramanmaraş, Gümüşhane, Elazığ and Artvin; and чурчхела across Russia and the CIS, where Georgian production is exported. Hazelnuts and almonds are used alongside walnuts in some regions.

The kernel line is the same in every case — inspect, grade, thread — which is why DOKTEK approaches it as one product family rather than one country's machine.

DOKTEK FoodTech builds machines for export from Denizli, Türkiye. Documentation is prepared in English (Turkish is available), the electrical supply is specified for the destination country, and packing, shipping terms, installation and commissioning are agreed per project. Producers in Georgia, Armenia, Russia, Cyprus and Greece can send kernel samples and product photos for a project review in English.

Кратко по-русски: DOKTEK FoodTech (Денизли, Турция) разрабатывает оборудование для обработки ядра грецкого ореха при производстве чурчхелы — машинное зрение для инспекции и сортировки ядер (цвет, плесень, скорлупа, половинки и четвертинки), автоматическое прокалывание и нанизывание орехов на нить (инженерный проект, проходит валидацию) и упаковку готовой продукции. Дробление ореха, варка и сушка остаются у производителя. Производительность и цены не публикуются до валидации на продукте заказчика. Напишите нам на английском или турецком языке.

DOKTEK does not build walnut crackers, shellers, hullers or in-shell calibrators; those are established commodity machines and the kernels DOKTEK receives come from them. Dipping in grape must and drying stay with the producer's process. What DOKTEK adds is the automation that has no standard machine: vision inspection of kernels, grading for threading, the threading itself and the packaging of the finished product.