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I'm surprised that, as the price increased, there has not been a mechanical automation found that would remove the labor requirement. Terrible for developing co

I'm surprised that, as the price increased, there has not been a mechanical automation found that would remove the labor requirement. Terrible for developing countries where labor is cheap and depends on that laborious task of harvesting threads.

Animats 2y ago
It's been done, by the iSaffron unit of Solbar Food Technologies in Israel.[1] Or so says a hype site from iSaffron in 2021.[2] No current mention. Solbar is the largest soybean processor in Israel, and saffron would be a rounding error for them. A Swedish company which produces saffron uses some robotics.[3] There's a German student group doing something. Nobody has video of anything working. It's probably do-able, but too niche to justify the effort. This 2018 "automatic saffron processing machine" looks fake.[4] [1] https://www.solbartech.com/about/ https://www.solbartech.com/about/ [2] https://www.isaffron.life/ https://www.isaffron.life/ [3] https://osterlensaffran.io/ https://osterlensaffran.io/ [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQMwknN8wQY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQMwknN8wQY