What Is Sortex Cleaning in Spices?

What is Sortex cleaning?

"Sortex" is optical colour-sorting: a machine scans the flow and ejects off-colour seeds, stones and foreign matter. It lifts a cleaned spice toward higher purity grades. It is a trade term for the process, not a statutory grade.

What Sortex actually does

• —Scans each particle by colour and shape as it falls through the machine.
• —Ejects discoloured, immature or damaged seeds and non-spice matter such as stones, mud balls and stalk.
• —Raises measurable purity, which is why higher cumin grades are quoted after machine cleaning.
• —Follows earlier steps like de-stoning, sieving and gravity separation; Sortex is the fine, colour-based pass.

How to use it in a spec

Buyers write "machine cleaned / Sortex" into a spec to signal a low foreign-matter, uniform lot, which matters for EU buyers who reject on foreign matter and for anyone milling to a clean powder. Pair it with a stated purity percentage so the requirement is testable.

Because "Sortex" is a brand-derived trade word rather than a legal grade, confirm the actual purity, foreign-matter and defect limits in the contract instead of relying on the label alone.

Frequently asked

Does Sortex remove pesticide or aflatoxin?

No. Colour-sorting removes visible defects and foreign matter. Pesticide, aflatoxin and Salmonella are controlled by sourcing, testing and, where relevant, steam sterilisation, not by optical sorting.