Pictured above: The Ishida CCW-R-214W-S/50-WP weighers
feature a hygienic waterproof construction designed for frozen food
applications
Belgian-based potato processor Agristo NV has installed a
customised packing line solution for frozen French Fries from
Ishida Europe and its sole distributer in Belgium BRN, to deliver
maximum production throughput and efficiencies as part of Agristo's
new state of the art factory in Tilburg.
The Ishida/BRN solution handles the packing process from the
outfeed of the freezing tunnel to the infeed of product to
bagmakers. It incorporates six of Ishida's state of the art CCW-R
series weighers, handling pack sizes from 450g to 2.5kg at speeds
of up to 100 bags per minute for the 450g pack.
Established in 1985, Agristo has grown into one of the leading
suppliers of potato products, producing over 200,000 tons each
year. The company specialises in frozen and pre-fried French Fries,
supplying the majority as own label in over 80 countries worldwide.
Agristo's longstanding relationship with BRN and Ishida made them
the obvious choice to devise a suitable packing solution for the
new factory. In particular, the logistics of the project made it
imperative that responsibilities were clearly defined among a small
number of key suppliers, and BRN was selected to handle the
packaging requirements alongside three other main suppliers for the
building, the processing area and automation.
From the freezing tunnel the French Fries progress onto an
integrated weigh belt, which monitors line capacity. In order to
regulate any fluctuations in the production and packing process and
ensure a regular feed of product to the weighers, any excess of
product is held in a special FiFo buffer to be fed back into the
packing line at the appropriate time. Product is also checked to
remove any sub-standard items (for example black spots) and then
sorted into the correct ratio of short and long length fries.
Excessive shorter length fries are diverted for subsequent packing
on a line dedicated to this product.
The Ishida weighers are CCW-R-214W-S/50-WP models, featuring a
hygienic waterproof construction designed for frozen food
applications. A key challenge of the installation was to keep the
upper and lower packing areas separate to enable easy hose down
cleaning of the weighers while preventing water ingress into the
dry packing area below. In addition, the cross feeders feature a
0.5m3 buffer capacity to regulate product flow to the weighers.
The R-Series weighers use state of the art hardware and software
to calculate and check weight combinations at high speeds, leading
to significant reductions in product giveaway. Increased
calculation speed also adds to overall efficiency, as the weigher
practically never finds it necessary to dump a weighment because it
is over- or underweight. Operator intervention is kept to a minimum
by an automatic feed control system and by the self-tuning
vibratory system which automatically adjusts vibration amplitude to
optimise product flow.
Part of the fries can be fed offline either to be mixed with a
processed product or packed separately as finished product.
"Ishida and BRN's approach to our requirements was excellent,"
comments Antoon Wallays of Agristo. "They demonstrated a full
understanding of what was needed, flexibility in the solution they
designed, and professionalism and fast response in its
installation."