Every cidery reaches a point where the harvest outgrows the hand-tipped bin, the borrowed washing trough and the weekend spent hovering over a batch press. It usually happens quietly, one season you're processing a few hundred kilos a day, and the next you're staring down several tonnes of orchard fruit with a crew that can't keep up and juice quality starting to slip because apples are sitting around too long before they're pressed.
This is exactly the gap Maurer Gép's fruit processing equipment is built to close. The Hungarian manufacturer produces heavy-duty, food-grade stainless steel machinery for commercial fruit and beverage processing, and three of its machines come up again and again in conversations with New Zealand cideries scaling up: the MKLB 1000 Electric Tipping Station, the MDK 1500 Fruit Washer & Grinder, and the MKSP 600 Beltpress. Used together, they take fruit from the orchard bin all the way to fresh juice with barely a hand touching it in between.
Below is a detailed look at each machine, what it does, how it works, what comes standard versus optional, and where it earns its keep in a real production line, followed by how the three fit together for a cidery moving into serious commercial territory.
MKLB 1000 Electric Tipping Station
Taking the manual labour out of bin handling
If you've ever tipped a full 400kg bin of apples by hand, or watched a forklift driver try to gently roll fruit into a hopper without bruising half of it, you already understand what the MKLB 1000 is for. It's a dedicated, purpose-built bin tipper that lifts and empties fruit bins weighing up to 1,000 kg, and it's designed to sit right at the entrance of the processing line, doing the one job that otherwise eats up the most manual labour and creates the most bottlenecks during harvest.
What makes it worth having
The standout feature isn't just that it lifts, it's how much control the operator retains throughout the cycle. A hydraulic lifting system raises and tips the bin, and it's fitted with an anti-fall safety mechanism, so the operator can stop the bin at any point during lifting or lowering. That matters in a working line, because it means you're never forced to empty an entire bin in one go if the equipment downstream can't absorb it that fast.
The tipping angle is steplessly adjustable, which is really the heart of what makes this machine useful beyond simply "lifting heavy things." Rather than dumping fruit in one uncontrolled rush, the operator can progressively tilt the bin to regulate exactly how quickly apples flow into the next stage, whether that's a washer, a sorting table, or straight into a hopper. Tipping speed is also adjustable, giving a second layer of control over how gently fruit is introduced.
It's built to handle the reality of a commercial orchard supply chain too, different growers turn up with different bin formats, and the MKLB 1000 is designed to accommodate a range of bin sizes, so you're not stuck retrofitting the whole reception area every time fruit arrives in an unfamiliar bin.
Construction is AISI 304 / WNr. 1.4301 stainless steel throughout, the electrics are IP65-rated for a wet processing environment, and the unit sits on four vibration-free feet for stable operation even during a long tipping cycle.
At 20–25 cycles an hour, one bin at a time, the MKLB 1000 can move well over a tonne of fruit through the line every few minutes — more than enough to keep a washer and press running flat out, with plenty of margin for the operator to hold back and meter fruit flow deliberately rather than flood the line.
MDK 1500 Fruit Washer & Grinder
Three jobs, one continuous machine
The MDK 1500 is where most of the actual preparation work happens, and it earns its place in a cidery by doing three separate jobs, washing, conveying, and grinding; inside a single continuous system. Fruit goes in dirty and comes out as clean, ready-to-press mash, without being handled in between. Rated at 1,500–2,000 kg/h, it's built for cideries that need a genuinely continuous feed during harvest, not a machine that needs babysitting between batches.
Function one: fruit washing
Apples go into the washing hopper and soak first, this loosens dirt, leaf matter and other orchard debris before any mechanical action starts. From there, four powerful counter-rotating brushes provide intensive scrubbing as the fruit is lifted through the machine, and a secondary fresh-water spray gives the apples a final rinse on their way to the grinder. For orchard fruit destined for cider, which often arrives with more dirt and plant matter than commercially graded eating apples, this two-stage soak-brush-rinse approach does a genuinely thorough job.
Function two: fruit conveying
An integrated elevator carries washed fruit up out of the water bath and on toward the grinder or downstream equipment. The conveyor speed is steplessly adjustable, which is a small detail that has a big practical effect: it lets the operator match the rate fruit moves through the washer to whatever the press or next stage can actually handle, rather than the washer setting a pace the rest of the line has to scramble to keep up with.
Function three: fruit grinding
The integrated grinder, a heavy-duty crushing hammer design, reduces washed fruit to mash, ready to go straight to pressing. Controlling mash consistency matters for juice yield, and the grinder can be fitted with changeable sieve diameters as an option, so the coarseness of the mash can be tuned to the apple variety or the requirements of the press downstream.
Flexibility built in
One of the more useful design choices on the MDK 1500 is that the grinder can be physically bypassed and rotated out of the processing path. Flip that switch and the machine becomes a pure fruit washer and conveyor, handy if you're processing stone fruit (which the manufacturer specifically notes this configuration supports), or if milling is being handled by separate equipment further down the line. It means one machine, not two, covers washing duties across different fruit types and different points in the season.
Options worth knowing about
- Changeable grinder sieves: swap sieve diameter to adjust mash texture for different varieties or pressing requirements.
- Stop 'n' Go system: a membrane sensor that coordinates the washer/grinder directly with a belt press, so the two machines effectively talk to each other and reduce the need for manual intervention at the handoff.
- Dosing module: a sliding door with an end switch that controls the transfer of mash from the grinder toward the press, for a more automated, metered feed.
- Grinder-free configuration: available without the grinder entirely, for operations that prefer to mill fruit separately.
For a cidery scaling up from small-batch or manual processing, this is really the machine that changes the game, three labour-intensive stages collapsed into one continuous, adjustable-speed process, with the flexibility to bypass grinding when it isn't needed.
MKSP 600 Beltpress
Continuous pressing built for harvest-season volumes
Once fruit is washed and milled, it needs to become juice, and this is where a lot of growing cideries hit a wall. A batch hydraulic or pneumatic press does a fine job at small volumes, but it forces a stop-start rhythm: load, press, unload, clean, reload. During a busy harvest week, that rhythm simply can't keep pace with everything happening upstream.
The MKSP 600 solves that by being a fully automatic continuous belt press, rated at 600 kg/h, that keeps juice flowing steadily rather than in batches. Fruit mash is carried through the press on a continuous food-grade polyester belt, with pressure progressively applied as it travels, squeezing out juice the whole way through rather than in one crushing step.
Juice quality, not just juice quantity
Two design details here are worth calling out specifically, because they speak directly to what matters for cider quality rather than just throughput. First, the working area is fully enclosed, which limits the juice's exposure to oxygen during extraction, a real consideration for anyone trying to preserve fresh apple character and minimise oxidation before fermentation. Second, the machine is built with a reduced distance between the press cylinder and the juice collection tray, specifically to help minimise foaming as juice is collected. Neither of these show up on a spec sheet as headline numbers, but they're the kind of engineering details that separate a machine built for juice quality from one built purely for speed.
On yield, the manufacturer specifies a potential extraction rate of up to 75%, though as with any press, actual results will depend on the variety, freshness and condition of the fruit going in. Still, for cider producers where every extra percentage point of juice per tonne of apples has a direct impact on the bottom line, that's a meaningful figure to plan around.
Control where it counts
An integrated inverter gives stepless adjustment of belt speed, so the pressing process can be tuned to the fruit in front of you, a soft, overripe variety and a firm, just-picked one don't behave the same way under pressure, and having that adjustment on hand means the operator isn't stuck with a single fixed setting all season.
Built for long harvest days
Cleaning matters just as much as pressing when a machine is running for hours on end during harvest. The MKSP 600 has two rotating wash heads built in beneath the machine specifically to clean the belt during operation, and the manufacturer describes it as easy to clean with minimal ongoing maintenance. It does need a high-pressure washer on hand (around 500 L/h water demand) and a compressed air supply, so it's worth checking those services are available before installation day.
For any cidery moving past small-batch pressing, the appeal of the MKSP 600 is straightforward: continuous operation, a compact 2100 x 1250 mm footprint, and design choices, the enclosed area, the reduced foaming distance, that are clearly aimed at producers who care about what ends up in the fermenter, not just how fast they can get there.
How the three machines work as one line
Individually, each of these machines solves a real problem. Put together, they form a genuinely continuous path from bulk bin to fresh juice:
Apple bins → MKLB 1000 (tip & meter) → MDK 1500 (wash, convey & grind) → MKSP 600 (continuous press) → juice handling → fermentation
A few things are worth understanding about how they're designed to work together, rather than just sit side by side:
They are deliberately mismatched in capacity — and that's the point. The MKLB 1000 can tip 20–25 bins an hour (up to a tonne each), and the MDK 1500 can wash and grind 1,500–2,000 kg/h. The MKSP 600, by contrast, presses 600 kg/h. That's not a flaw, it's headroom. The tipper and washer are built with adjustable speeds and angles precisely so they can be throttled back to match the press, which is the natural pace-setter for the whole line. In practice, this means the press rarely runs short of mash, and the earlier stages absorb the day-to-day variability in fruit condition, dirt load and bin sizes without becoming a bottleneck themselves.
The washer and press can talk to each other. The MDK 1500's optional Stop 'n' Go system uses a membrane sensor to coordinate directly with the belt press, and the optional dosing module adds a controlled, sliding-door handoff of mash between the two. For a cidery running lean during harvest, this kind of stage-to-stage automation is what actually reduces the number of people needed on the floor, not just faster individual machines, but less manual coordination between them.
Site services need to be planned once, for all three. All three machines run on a 400 V three-phase supply, combined draw is roughly 5.75 kW across the line, and all three carry an IP65 electrical rating suited to a wet, hose-down processing floor. Water is needed at two points (the MDK 1500's washing system at 100–200 L/h, and the MKSP 600's belt cleaning at around 500 L/h via high-pressure washer), and the MKSP 600 also needs compressed air (50 L/h at 6 bar). None of this is unusual for a commercial food processing site, but it's worth confirming against existing infrastructure before installation rather than after.
Floor space and layout deserve early planning. Between the three machines, this is a real footprint, the MKLB 1000 alone stands roughly 3 metres tall, and the MDK 1500 runs over 3 metres long. Planning bin access, operator walkways, and downstream tank positioning at the same time as the equipment layout will save a lot of retrofitting headaches later.
Everything is built to be cleaned, because it has to be, often. Stainless steel construction, IP65 electrics and low-maintenance design run through all three machines. During a long harvest run, that's not a nice-to-have, it's what keeps the line moving through daily wash-downs without eating into processing time.
Is this the right setup for your cidery?
This three-machine line is aimed squarely at cideries and apple processors who've outgrown manual or small-batch processing and need to handle serious harvest volumes without a large manual-handling crew, orchard-based cider producers, contract cider and juice processors, and fruit businesses looking to add or expand commercial juice extraction capability.
You don't necessarily need to take on all three at once. Plenty of operations start by mechanising the single stage causing the most pain, often bin handling with the MKLB 1000, or washing and milling with the MDK 1500 and add the rest of the line as volume grows. But if you're planning a genuinely continuous path from orchard bin to fresh juice, these three machines are designed from the ground up to work as a set, with the adjustability on each one specifically built to help them run in step with each other.
If you'd like more detail on any of the three machines, help working out how they'd fit your site, or a quote for your expected harvest volumes, get in touch; we're happy to talk through the specifics for your operation.