SubscribeA special 14 head salad version of Ishida’s newest R Series multihead weigher has helped to increase production at Vega Mayor S.A. in Navarre, Spain, part of the Florette group, a leading supplier of fruit and vegetables with 15% of the European supermarket sector.
R-Series weighers benefit from major technical advances at Ishida, which have increased speed and accuracy. However, for salad packers the main attraction of the new range is the powerful feeder vibration system, which uses Ishida PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) technology. The combination of this system and special C4 contact materials are key factors in keeping difficult salads moving.
A special 14 head salad version of Ishida's newest R Series multihead weigher has helped to increase production at Vega Mayor
"Our type of product needs a lot of vibration to keep it moving," confirms Luis M. López, Industrial Development Director. "The new Ishida offers greater amplitude and better control of the vibration timing , and indeed tunes itself to give the optimum result. This helps to speed up production, and also means that labour is saved because there is less need to keep checking product flow.
"A major point for me is that, in the R-Series, Ishida have developed a new way of attaching the vibrating parts to the machine body. Even after less than a year, it is clear that this leads to much less wear, and therefore to less maintenance. In this business, where freshness and delivery times are so important, downtime has to be kept to an absolute minimum."
At Vega Mayor, everything is aimed at achieving a fresh, natural product for the consumer.
Forty different vegetables come into the company's temperature controlled warehouses where they are quality controlled and selected as needed to meet demand. At any one time, up to eight lines are running. A typical process would involve machine-coring of the salad heads and removal of the outer leaves, followed by washing in water at 2-4°C and drying by gentle centrifuging. Any cutting and mixing is then carried out, before the product travels via an elevator to an Ishida multihead weigher mounted over a bagmaker.
The plant produces 118 different salad combinations, in bags weighing from 150g to 1.5kg. The new Ishida is used mainly for retail packs of 200g and 400g, with speeds varying from 45 packs per minute for very light leaves such as watercress or lambs lettuce to around 70 packs per minute with iceberg lettuce
With Florette's sales increasing by on average 10% a year across Europe, the challenge to plants like Vega Mayor is to maintain quality and avoid any disruption to production. The R series is the 9th Ishida weigher to be installed at the plant.
"We have quite a long history with Ishida, and I have found the equipment to be reliable and of a high level of technology," comments Señor López. "What I would most like would be for all eight machines to be as good as this new R-Series model!"
18 April 2007
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