ASTRA

Based in Fukushima, Japan, ASTRA has been fully dedicated to automatic peeler innovation for more than 20 years. The company has been granted several awards related to automatic peeling technologies, including the ‘Kitchen Innovations Award’ in 2018, ‘Touhoku New Business Award’ in 2019, and the ‘14th Nippon New Business Creation Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence’ in December 2019.

ASTRA's CEO, Hirotaka Ichijo, was born on a kaki (persimmon) farmer in Fukushima, Japan. Since his childhood, he had peeled tons and tons of kaki and always thought that hand peeling was boring and inefficient.

When he grew up, his mother bought an automatic peeling machine. At that time peeling machine was just a fruit rotating machine, and the worker had to hold the peeling blade in one’s hand. The machine worked well for a while, but it was taking its toll on her mother’s body and broke her shoulder. It was at this moment that he decided to manufacture a peeling machine that truly helps people, including his family.
The development of kaki peeling machine was not a smooth road. Overcoming many obstacles for over ten years, ASTRA kaki peeling machine became the machine with the most market share in Japan.

Then ASTRA started to apply the peeling technology to manufacture a peeling machine that can peel a variety of fruits. Peeling apples was easy, but oranges and kiwi were both very difficult. Development took years to peel these fruits. Simultaneously ASTRA started to manufacture a peeling machine for larger fruits, such as pineapple, mango, and melon.
ASTRA's challenge to exterminate hand peeling from the world has just begun.

ASTRA's "Blade Peeler" technology makes its peeling machine one and only. The principle is similar to manual peeling. When the peeled fruit is rotating, the blade moves in a polygonal way, while always tightly pressed to the surface of the fruit. This makes the peeled fruit surface beautiful.

Benefits of the “Blade Peeler”

Faster peeling
Simply, the peeling speed will be faster. Since the blade is sharp, even if the rotation speed is very fast, the peeling quality will not change.

Smooth surface
While most of the normal peeling machines make bumpy, rough surfaces, ASTRA machines can make a smooth surface.

High yield rate
A smooth surface leads to less waste and a high yield rate because it peels minimum edible parts.

Less juice dripping
Since the surface is smooth, fruit juice will be kept inside the fruit, which expands the shelf life.

Peeling depth adjustable
You can peel only the yellow surface of the lemon, which is loved by the lemon liquor distilleries. With the same machine, you can peel the thick skin of grapefruit.