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| | A prominent British food company supplies to a very big supermarket chain in the UK with eg fresh and convenient salads.
From manual to automated portioning
The salads consist of four ingredients, e.g. shredded carrots, shredded lettuce, corn and prawns deposited into a transparent plastic bowl in a four layer presentation. Earlier, the UK-company weighed and deposited the salads into the bowls by hand. However, the costs resulting from this process were significant – partly due to very high levels of give-away caused by the lack of precision in the manual dosing process – and partly due to many man-hours.
For years, BILWINCO has worked closely together with the company and has automated several weighing and packing lines that handle different kinds of vegetables. With every automated weighing system, they have significantly reduced their give-away and manual labour and boosted their output. As a result of the close co-operation between the two companies, an investment was decided upon to automate their layered salad bowl line. To keep up with the urgent demand on the market, higher levels of efficiency, lower costs and - at the same time - a much larger capacity was required.
The BILWINCO solution
Through BILWINCO’s UK agent, Ancholme Machinery – represented by Phil Stephens – BILWINCO delivered a complete weighing and packing solution including four multihead weighers, type BW110W - one weigher for each ingredient. Two product lifts with two columns for elevating/lowering of four Eurobins feed the different products onto the weighers. Four filling tools deposit the weighed out portions into the bowls that advance to the filling station on a two-lane conveyor. The weighers handle 20-80g portions at speeds of 55-60 bowls per minute.
The four multihead weighers are mounted on a hygienic platform specially designed for easy cleaning and the high hygiene requirements of the food industry. The weighers withstand high-pressure cleaning, which ensures an efficient cleaning process.
Indisputable advantages
Phil Stephens from Ancholme Machinery tells us: “The BILWINCO weighing and packing system provided full automation of this very labour-intensive production line. Immediately, production output increased with a fraction of the original labour force – and improvements were noted with regard to the pack presentation. A much higher level of precision in the filling of individual ingredients into the salad bowl and much improved reduction in spillage have also justified the investment made on this installation.”
“The customer recognised the major benefits of a fully automated weighing/packing system and, therefore, they have decided to invest in a second four layer salad bowl line,” concludes Mr Stephens.
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