Position: This article describes a high speed multihead weighing scale manufactured by Ishida.
High speeds, increased throughput, low giveaway and gentle product handling are among the reasons why Steenderen, the Netherlands-headquartered Aviko, a major processor of frozen potato products in Europe, uses Ishida multihead weighing equipment to help meet production targets.
Meanwhile, a new packing line for frozen foods, featuring an Ishida multihead industrial weighing scale, devised and installed by Ishida agent BRN, has increased throughput while being able to cope with 800 different products in a variety of formats at contract packer Sivafrost NV's plant in Dendermonde, Belgium.
It's been a matter of fast payback for Aviko, which for 40 years has supplied quality potato products to customers around the world, and works closely with many of the largest retailers and foodservice companies in Europe. Aviko's factory at Rain am Lech, in the Bavarian region of Germany, is dedicated to the production of frozen french fries--of which the company sells nearly four million portions daily in the European take-home market alone.
In the past six years, Aviko has acquired eight Ishida multihead weighing scales. Since the first installation, production has risen by 56%, yet no additional operators have been required to get the job done. Aviko attributes this success to a number of factors, not least of which is the weighing scale's accuracy.
When Production Manager Hans Pohl and his colleagues first researched what they should expect from multihead weighing in terms of accuracy, they estimated that the average weight variation across all their different pack sizes would be "... somewhere around one percent." In fact, the annual average with the Ishida weighing scales at Rain am Lech has turned out to be 0.34%. "We were very pleased indeed with the even better actual figure," commented Pohl.
Lower variation enables target weights to be set very close to the declared pack weights, helping to cut down giveaway. With the factory producing many tons of fries per hour, even a one percent reduction in giveaway can mean an extra yield of tens of tons per year. Speed and reliability are also important; 450-gram packs are being weighed at 75 per minute, with 2,500-gram food-service packs running at up to 40 per minute. And that performance is reliable.
Some 20% of Aviko's turnover in major European markets comes from products the company has introduced over the past five years. That calls for an innovative approach in the challenging and competitive nature of the potato process weighing industry.
The Ishida machines at Rain am Lech handle 300 different products, with variations in weight, thickness and cutting patterns. Changeover from one to the other is simply a matter of selecting the relevant preset program on the system's user-friendly color touch-screen.
Sivafrost Installation
First established in 1986 to provide refrigerated warehousing and other services, Sivafrost added contract packing and thus installed a line with a multihead weighing scale. Over time this equipment was no longer sufficient for the volume of products to be packed, so the company decided to seek a faster way to get the job done.
The new line installed by BRN includes a lift/tipper for octabins serving a three-square-meter feeding hopper, a vibratory feeder to take product from the weigh hopper to the top of the multihead weigher, the weighing scale itself (a 14-head Ishida model) and the supporting steelwork. Individually quick frozen products handled by the line range from herbs to potato waffles, with target weights running the gamut from 50 grams to 3,000 grams.
The weighing scale has a standard configuration, with ring gate, semi-flat radial feeder troughs, five-liter size anti-spillage pool and weigh hoppers, and a beak-type timing hopper at the outlet. The system is coping well with the demands of contract packing.
Sivafrost has a wide range of customers and can be called upon at short notice to handle any of about 800 different products in 20 to 30 formats.
Tips: A quality weighing controller is impotant to the work of weiging scales.
