Modular line integration
The new Retail Ready Line from Ishida Europe is a fully automated solution for packing meat and poultry into trays. It is claimed to maximise production efficiency, provide comprehensive quality control and offer a reduction in waste and manpower.
This approach covers the entire fresh product weighing and packing process: tray denesting, weighing, filling, checkweighing, tray sealing, metal detection, weigh-price-labelling, automatic label inspection and automatic packing into cases or Euro crates.
"Ishida Europe has been a major exponent of the integrated approach for many years, developing complete packing line solutions for customers in a wide variety of end markets," says Paul Griffin, Ishida Europe's marketing director. "The Retail Ready Line builds on this trend to provide a total solution that is ideal for the meat and poultry industry."
The line can be tailored to individual user requirements, for example, where pre-packed products or packs of uniform weight are required.
Labelling automation is becoming increasingly popular, but this brings its own set of problems. The main one is the nature of the product itself. Meat and poultry are notoriously sticky, so automatic weighing presents a major challenge.
Over the years, special surfaces for weighing equipment have been developed to ensure that these types of product move easily and without sticking. Similarly belt feeders, plastic contact parts and hoppers with sliding doors have been employed to help to keep product moving effectively.
Such features are incorporated into weighing equipment for fresh produce such as Ishida's Fresh Food Weigher range -- part of the Retail Ready Line -- which increases accuracy and speed.
"Clearly speed, accuracy and flexibility are the key influencers for all new equipment development in the packing process," says Griffin. "The overriding aim is to deliver the maximum amount of product at the minimum cost."
Contact: Ishida Europe, Tel: 0121 607 7700
