Cabinplant introduces next-generation weighing and packaging solutions for the food industry. With the fully automatic MHW SF Extreme, it is now possible to weigh and pack sticky products that, among other things, are used for the booming convenience market.
Cabinplant in Haarby on Funen, Denmark, are specialists in process solutions for the food industry, selling to a large part of the global market. With the new, fully automated weighing and packing machine, they break the boundaries of what has been possible so far in weighing, dosing, and packing of sticky products, which play a crucial role for the convenience sector.
Convenience meals – ready-to-eat – is a booming market. It has already reached 500 billion USD and is expected to grow by three percent annually in the coming years – a trend that has been further amplified by the covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, Cabinplant’s fully automated solution has great appeal to a booming sector where there have been many challenges to overcome.
The food industry has become increasingly aware of the vulnerability of their production, actualized during the pandemic, where especially labour-intensive production and packaging lines have shown significant vulnerability. The new weighing and packaging machine enables increased automation and reduces the food manufacturers’ risks of involuntary production stoppages.
Sticky products a well-known hurdle
Increased automation has been limited by the widespread use of sticky ingredients in ready-to-eat products, as the fully automated packaging plants have not been able to handle them. So far, the limit has been reached for fresh products such as chicken and fish. Stickier products have stuck to the weighing machine and have not been able to be packaged properly. This challenge is solved by the new patent from Cabinplant.
Patent enables full automation
In the new Multihead Weigher SF Extreme, Cabinplant’s combination weigher is equipped with screw feeders, new scraper/weighing pans and a completely new processing solution, where the selected sub-portions are weighed and mixed in a pan. A unique scraper design in the pan ensures that the entire portion is dispensed into a cassette. From here, the food is packed into the trays on the conveyor belt.
Thus, Cabinplant’s revolutionary new weighing machine makes it possible to fully automate the dosing and packaging of ready-to-eat meals, which includes sticky ingredients such as diced vegetables, onion rings, rice, pasta, tuna fish, mayonnaise, yoghurt, etc. These processes were previously performed manually or partially manually.
– It is a technological breakthrough that breaks the boundaries of what has been possible so far with package lines and Multihead weighers. Now the production of a large number of ready-to-eat meals can be fully automated, says Henning Ingemann Hansen, Director of Research and Development, Cabinplant A / S.
The end-product can be ready-to-eat meals, which are packed in plastic trays, standing bags, etc. The cassettes can be replaced, which reduces the time for cleaning and changing to only 5-10 minutes. It solves the challenges with frequent changes in recipes and packaging sizes at a time when the retail trade wants more varieties as well as more frequent and smaller deliveries than ever before.
High precision – less give-away
The solution does away with excessive give-away, which is often seen on manual fill lines. The precision is very high and more than meets the strict European E-standard, where a maximum of 2.5 percent of the packaging can be underweight.
Reduces production vulnerability
Cabinplant has developed the solution in collaboration with a large, European poultry company that invests heavily in the production of convenience food. Here, experience shows that the number of operators has been reduced by 8-9 people per line, or 60-70 percent. This has increased productivity and reduced the vulnerability of the production line significantly.
– Our fully automated MHW SF Extreme weighing solution for sticky products removes a major bump in food manufacturers’ roadmap, where constant productivity improvements and new solutions are needed to increase retail competitiveness. Therefore, we have high expectations for the new solution, concludes Michal Falck Schmidt, Sales Director at Cabinplant A/S, where they predict great export potential for the new solution.
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