A Mexican dairy that makes a range of cheese delicacies is expanding

Starting situation:

Our customer is a long-established family company that has been producing cheese delicacies since 1975. Originally highly appreciated and well-known throughout the region, they have since found fans beyond national borders. The dairy satisfies this demand, growing the company in a continuous process from a major regional market player to an internationally active cheese specialist exporter. In tandem with this, it is also changing from manual work to more industrial production.

Challenges:

The customer wants to deliver more products to end customers and optimize the appearance of its cheese specialties. So far, only a few products were packaged in shrink bags; the bags were then shrunk manually. This was only possible with more personnel and a low number of packaged units. Capacity was further limited owing to the bagging operation that required the work of quite a few people. The customer wants a semi-automatic solution here that is easy to maintain, reduces personnel requirements and accelerates the tempo of bagging.

Our solution:

The customer received a vacuum belt machine of the GK 402 B type with water cooling as well as punching and perforation knives. This machine handles the packaging of approx. 80% of the overall production. An AT 8, a shrink tank that automatically conveys the cheese into the tank, submerges it and conveys it from the tank, was added to the line; as well as a BL 15, a fully automatic dryer whose air knives adapt to the product contour in terms of height to ensure an optimal drying result with different product heights. In this way, the end product can be designed to be more appealing to the customer; labeling is made easier as well. In addition, a BG450 PLUS was integrated in the line to speed up the bagging of cheeses significantly. The bag opens automatically by air pressure, and the product only needs to be pushed in by the operator.