17 March 2025

3 minute read

By: Sarah Mikesell

Josh Yoshida, vice president of sales and marketing for Orka Food Technology, spoke with The Poultry Site’s Sarah Mikesell recently at IPPE in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, about the Egg Tester Ultimate and its positive recognition by universities and academics.

Josh, tell us about the Egg Tester Ultimate.

The Egg Tester Ultimate measures eggshell strength, Haugh Unit, yolk color, USDA grade and eggshell thickness – all in one unit.

Recently, we are receiving a lot of strong recognition from academics such as those at Mississippi State University, Auburn University, University of Connecticut, the University of Kentucky and others. Plus, we also have several universities around the global who speak highly of our product like customers in China, India, Latin America, the Philippines and other regions.

It’s nice to get the attention and recognition, and we appreciate their warm words about their experiences working with the Egg Tester Ultimate and our team.

What are the key benefits that academics experience with this product?

They are talking mainly about three benefits:

• First, the machine itself is not user-dependent, meaning if you test it or if I test it, the results will be the same. It's very objective, accurate and consistent.
• Second, the testing time is very short. It only takes 17-18 seconds to measure and get results. Usually, university students or research assistants are doing the testing, and they love it because it's very fast without losing accuracy. And it's very clean. Instead of doing everything in the manual, it's very clean and consistent.
• Third, this machine offers self in-line calibration and does not require a manufacturer calibration. Normally, this kind of sophisticated device requires periodic calibration, requiring the owner to send the unit back to the manufacturer at least once a year. However, our machine does an automatic calibration whenever you turn it on, so you don't ever have to send the unit back to us. We do provide free lifetime calibration, but with this device it’s not needed, which saves customers time and shipping cost. This is a very significant point of differentiation for university research which needs to be precise, and our freshly calibrated machine delivers consistent, accurate results.

What we hear is that researchers love working with it, and they are asking their professors to add it to the budget and purchase it for use in their labs.

Josh, are they using the Egg Tester Ultimate with their research projects?

Yes, some of the universities do a lot of tests. We heard from a university from China that they may do up to 800 tests per day which is significant. If you try to do these test manually, you just can't stay on top of it, but with the help of a machine like Egg Tester Ultimate and it’s speed, it's going to be much easier.

Who else should be using the Egg Tester Ultimate?

Academics, universities and institutions are very important customers, but there are a lot of different uses and different types of companies that use our product. We also sell to layer operations, grading and packing facilities and feed companies among others. They are all very important parts of our customer base as well.

With the global poultry industry dealing with bird flu, getting every egg to the consumer has become even more important.

Avian Influenza (HPAI) is making our egg supply very valuable right now. Our line of devices can help monitor egg quality and shell strength to ensure eggs are making it to processors, retailers and ultimately the consumer.

And it’s likely the reason that last year we saw record sales, and we want to say thanks to our customers – old and new – for their support of our business. We were so busy last year that our production line was trying to keep up with the demand. This clearly shows that every egg is important and monitoring egg quality is becoming even more important to the poultry industry.