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| | Marmara Birlik in Turkey was established in 1954 as a co-operative specialising in the production of olives. With 50,000 members, the company has become the world’s largest supplier of olives in thermo-formed cups/cans and other olive products. Export accounts for a large part of the production.
Difficult cleaning and an inefficient weighing and packaging process
Marmara Birlik’s olives are packed in cans and thermo-formed cups. Some years ago, when Marmara Birlik came into contact with Elotes, BILWINCO’s Turkish agent, the company had three thermo-forming lines with multihead weighers (not BILWINCO systems). However, these lines had a serious design flaw. When the lines needed washing down, wash water dripped on to the packaging machines that obviously risked damage. Therefore, operators had to remove the packaging machines before washing the weighers. The result was too long downtime.
Filling took place in a drum that the cans passed through. The blades in the drum lifted the olives and dropped them randomly into cans. The olives were not weighed or controlled, and the filling process was far too slow. Furthermore, the products were handled very roughly as olives could recirculate for a long time until they would eventually fall into a can.
Marmara Birlik’s technical manager, Emir Ayma, explains: ”Our can filling line was very inefficient, and the lack of precision in the dosing process resulted in high levels of give-away. As a matter of fact, we had not considered automating the line, but we found the BILWINCO can filling system and mobile concept so interesting that we consented to see a similar line at another food supplier.”
”Very quickly, we were convinced that a fully automated weighing and packaging system would rationalise our production of olives. We specified our requirements and placed the order with BILWINCO. Among others, we needed a guarantee that the system could tolerate olive juices with high pH levels.”
Weighing and filling system with interchangeable chutes
The system delivered by BILWINCO includes:
• A mobile product infeed system.
• A multihead weigher mounted on a mobile/drop-down support frame with a twin filling/sinking unit.
• A can filling system with a conveyor which feeds the empty cans into the filling station and removes the filled ones – and a filling position with four sets of interchangeable filling chutes for different can sizes. The filling chutes are lowered into the cans during filling, which prevents product waste.
• The stainless steel design ensures that the whole system tolerates the aggressive environment.
Efficient, flexible and easy to clean
Mr Ayma continues: ”Two years have now passed since the can line was delivered, and many inefficiency problems have been solved during that time. We can define and weigh high-precision portions, which has cut raw material costs. We now have a high-speed weighing and packaging process that is very flexible. With a single multidump feature, we can weigh up to 4 kg as well as even bigger portions. Thanks to the different filling chutes, we can handle a range of portion and can sizes. The weigher’s mobile/drop-down support frame simplifies the cleaning process – thus fulfilling our hygiene requirements.”
Marmara Birlik produces five different portion sizes from 400 g to 4 kg. Similarly, five different can sizes from Ø 99 mm to Ø 175 mm are filled. Can heights are from 119 to 250 mm. The weigher doses portions of 400 g at a speed of 70 portions per minute. For portions of 4 kg, the capacity is 20 portions per minute.
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