A true technological quantum leap in poultry products packaging – more automation, less expenditure, maximum future-proofness

Starting situation

An Italian food processing company, specialized in top-quality poultry products, has continuously expanded its range of chicken and turkey roasts as well as cold cuts for both store brands and leading retail chains. With the market share, the production volume also significantly rose. In order to accelerate competitiveness further, production is to be brought up to state-of-the-art in terms in technology while providing a higher degree of automation in the long term.

Challenge

The previous packaging processes were manual to a large extent. In particular, the bagging of products required a large number of personnel and a corresponding expenditure of time and money. The elaborate handling processes had a negative effect on efficiency and restricted the scalability of production. The objective here was to reduce manual activity significantly, automate processes and implement a more cost-efficient packaging solution – while meeting premium quality requirements.

Solution

A GK 662 B constitutes the locomotive of the new line; it has a sealing bar length of 1,100 mm, designed for medium-sized production quantities. The machine packages reliably and flexibly different product sizes up to and including 12 kg. It is equipped with water-cooled sealing bars in a closed circuit system, so not a drop of water is wasted. Furthermore, the system sports a Supervac double-biactive sealing, one-of-a-kind on the market, ruling out air pockets. The protruding bag material is neatly cut immediately after sealing by the integrated complete cut-off.

The products are automatically inserted into the bags via a BG 450 Plus. Afterward, a robot puts the bags on the split belt (timed belt) of the GK 662 B. This combination of bag feeding, robotics and vacuum belt machine ensures a continuous, highly automated packaging process with massively reduced personnel needs – while handling different weight and format variants with huge flexibility.

In addition, the system is fully integrated in the network and meets Industry 4.0 standards, which means production data is captured transparently and processes are optimally monitored.

The result is a vital step toward automation. At the same time, Supervac is positioned as a one-stop supplier with this project, including an integrated robotics solution, and is boosting its market presence in holistic packaging systems.