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| | Darrell Lea is the largest privately owned confectionery manufacturer in Australia, with 75 of its own outlets and another 320 franchise outlets. Their product range consists of over 500 products (with an additional 60 or so manufactured specifically for seasonal events such as Easter and Christmas).
The company also sells one of their most popular products – Liquorice – via the Internet to customers in North/South America, Europe and Asia.
Handling a sticky product
Chris Yates, Engineering Manager at Darrell Lea’s manufacturing plant in Kogarah, near Sydney, explains: “Darrell Lea produces a unique Soft Eating Liquorice which is made from wheat flour, semi refined raw sugar, molasses, treacle, natural liquorice extract, glucose and pure aniseed oil. Due to the extremely difficult handling qualities of the product, we had previously weighed and bagged the liquorice into bags by hand. Obviously, this was very labour-intensive, so we looked at ways of automating the process.
Our first requirement was that the equipment could handle flexible product sizes and consistency. On top of this, the equipment had to be able to cope with a 24 hour production line capable of producing over one ton/per hour. Having a continuous cooking process, we need a machine capable of running consistently with low downtime.
We initially ran a one-day trial with the BILWINCO multihead weigher and were impressed with its ability to handle such a sticky product. It coped very well with the 120mm Soft Eating Liquorice, which is very pliable and soft. Additionally, it also handled our 40mm red liquorice product, which is produced with additional glucose for export to the North American market.”
The BILWINCO solution
- BILWINCO multihead weigher
- Loading conveyor for weigher
- Transfer feeder from loading conveyor to weigher
- Accumulation and reject function
- Project managed by Select Packaging Systems, BILWINCO´s Australian distributor
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