Packaging of fresh meat in Argentina

Starting situation:

Our customer is an ambitious company near Buenos Aires in Argentina. The company produces high-quality beef for the domestic and international markets. The customer knows it’s not enough for long-term success to sell just-average beef. Their ambition is to increase the export share on a large scale not only in percentage terms but also in absolute terms. The proportion of premium products is to be upped so as to increase the yield per product sold.

Challenges:

Firstly, the customer has only a small area for the installation of the machines; at the same time, ambitions for growth are in the forefront.
Secondly, the target growth market in exports poses major challenges: high hygienic standards, strict contractual obligations and very long minimum shelf-life for the meat products.
Regardless of the market goals, capacity is limited due to many manual steps, and personnel expenditures are high and should be reduced.

Our solution:

Together with the customer, we planned a compact packaging layout consisting of 2 GK 852 B packaging machines in combination with an immersion tank, a cooling tank and a dryer.
Product shelf-life was considerably extended with the compact AC15 cooling tank. For more than a year now, the customer has been able to guarantee to his buyers maximum shelf-life for his beef products.
At the same time, personnel requirements were reduced more than 50%. No more than one or two people take out the packed and dry products at the end, label them and put them in the cardboard packaging. The customer is very well satisfied and is already planning the expansion of the plant; the new building will be equipped with more Supervac machines.