About Us

With 40 years of optical color and sorting expertise, California-based WECO (Woodside Electronics Corporation) is a world leader in our industry. We have been designing, manufacturing and servicing electronic sorters for more than three decades, and thousands of our units are deployed worldwide. WECO equipment serves several fruit and nut processing sectors: tomato sorting on the harvester, walnut and pecan line sorting and drying, hops kiln moisture monitoring, and small fruit sorting of blueberries, cranberries, olives, coffee cherries and wine grapes. 

Our Mission

Our mission is to improve our customers’ productivity and efficiency through automation. We strive to provide the highest quality, affordable products and services to our existing and future customers.

Our Vision

Our vision is to be the leading provider of labor automation equipment to the industries we serve and to continue to find new industries and customers to whom we can provide value.

Guiding Principles

We put the customer first and ensure that our products and services provide our customers with maximum operational productivity and efficiency. We conduct our business with the highest levels of honesty and integrity, both with our customers and within our company.

Our values

Our core values represent a rock-solid set of shared beliefs and behaviors that unite us and guide our every action.

INTEGRITY
We act with absolute integrity and accountability in all we do. We are honest and sincere in our dealings with others. We take responsibility for our individual actions in order to enhance our good reputation and meet the needs of our customers, employees and other stakeholders. We seek to be more than trustworthy — we seek to be trusted.        

TEAMWORK
We build lasting relationships by working closely with our customers and each other. We build lasting relationships that stand the test of time by working together effectively as a team. We instill confidence in our customers and each other by pursuing a shared vision and set of goals together, sharing the risk, the work and the rewards.

RESPECT
We treat each other and our environment with respect. At all times and in all situations, we treat people with fairness, courtesy and dignity. This is how we create an atmosphere of mutual respect and demonstrate our commitment to safety, equality and diversity.

WINNING SPIRIT
We perform with purpose and strive for excellence at all times. We desire to be the best, to never settle for less than excellence. We are never satisfied with the status quo. We love what we do, we love to compete, and we love to win.

SENSE OF URGENCY
We serve our customers with agility, responsiveness and reach. There is no time like now because often, tomorrow is too late. This is why we always strive to move quickly to deliver what our customers need, when and where they need it.

Our History

In 1976, Wayne Earl, a graduate of Stanford University with an MBA in Industrial Engineering, was employed by Accurex. The company asked him to join Icore to develop the first color sorter to be mounted on a Johnson Farm Machinery tomato harvester. After several years of perfecting the design, Earl purchased the rights to the tomato sorter technology from Icore.

Earl founded Woodside Electronics (WECO) in 1982 in Mountain View, CA, and within a few years moved the company to Woodland, CA to be closer to Johnson Farm Machinery. A turning point occurred in 1990 when the first Johnson tomato harvesters were sent to Spain with WECO’s sorter, the Golden Streak. A proven success, the WECO sorter was mounted on hundreds of harvesters in a very short time, greatly reducing manual labor.

Wanting to broaden his product line to include other fruits and nuts, Earl developed Hi-Res Optical Sorting Technology in 1999 and deployed it for use in the walnut huller industry. This technology was successful in removing the adhering hull and black walnuts along with foreign material. Taking it a step further, Xres Camera Technology was developed in 2003 for in-shell walnut sorting. Today, WECO is the leading supplier of sorting and automation equipment to walnut hulling and drying lines.

Don Douglas purchased WECO in 2004 from Mr. Earl. His first project to advance the product line was the development of a new tomato sorter to replace the Golden Streak. The new TomatoTek offered the same effectiveness as the Golden Streak while adding several special features, including RFID, GPS, wireless remote control, driver’s console, and data logging and transmission. 

Fast-forwarding to today, WECO has grown exponentially through introduction of full-line Berry sorting and processing equipment, development of new sorting lines for Coffee Cherries, Olives, Pecans, and Wine Grapes, and deployment of innovative Moisture Monitoring systems for Hops and Nut products.  Combined with the technical, financial, and human resources of Duravant, who acquired WECO in 2020, we are even better positioned to serve growers and processors now and into the future.

WECO celebrates its 40th anniversary in 2022, with satisfied customers throughout the world and a team of people dedicated to continuous improvement for the benefit of those we serve.