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20 SEPTEMBER 2008 | PBEI CASE HISTORY EWOS produces fish feed at plants in Norway, Chile, Canada, and Scotland. It also operates several fish farms, where it raises salmon, trout, and other species. The company is known in the aquaculture industry for its Dynamic brands of fish feed. It has about 800 workers worldwide. The EWOS plant in Westfield, Scotland, makes a full range of feeds on two process lines, each following the same basic steps. A weigh-batching system meters the ingredients, then grinders reduce the particle sizes. After blending and mixing, the moist feed passes through an extruder. Next comes drying, vacuum coating with oil, and bagging. The feeds vary in size from crumbles of 0.3 millimeters to pellets of 25 millimeters. They also contain different amounts of oil, nutrients, pigments, and other ingredients to suit the fish species, its growth stage, its habitat, and other factors. As a result of these variables, the Westfield plant offers 1,000 different feeds. Flexibility is key With so many different products, “We’ve got to be very flexible,” said Mark Wright, process engineering manager. Each new production run can require stopping the process to clean and re-fit the extruder, as well as to clean the dryer and cooler. A run might be as small as 2.5 tons, Wright said. In that case, “the extruder is up for cleaning even before the product is through the dryer. But we’ve gotten pretty good at FFS bagging adds flexibility at feed plant FORM-FILL-SEAL BAGGING SYSTEM HANDLES OUTPUT FROM TWO PROCESS LINES. The net weigher, installed above the FFS bagging machine, can make 600 25-kilogram weighments per hour. it, pretty good at standardizing the routine.” Automation and an experienced staff minimize product re-work, he said. Each of the two process lines has an extruder. One can produce 9 tons per hour, and the other can produce 5 tons per hour. Together, the two process lines can make about 80,000 tons per year. Actual production fluctuates with the slow and busy periods of the fish-farm business. “If it’s stormy weather in January or February, for instance, production starts dropping off because the farmers can’t get to the fish,” Wright
Using one FFS system to handle the production of two lines made it possible to reduce the number of workers running the bagging operation. It also means EWOS can stop buying ready-made bags. The savings on bags alone will pay for the cost of installing the complete FFS system within 6 years. The FFS bagging machine makes bags from polyethylene tube stock, eliminating the need for ready-made bags. said. “We might go from 6,500 to 3,000 tons in a month.” At the moment, production is about 50,000 tons per year. Most of the feed goes to customers within the UK and Ireland. Some also goes to Norway, and about 25 percent of production goes to EWOS-owned fish farms. Improving packaging EWOS ships about 55 percent of its feed in 25-kilogram bags. The rest is shipped in 500-kilogram and 1,000-kilogram bulk bags. For years, each process line had its own semi-automatic packing machine to fill 25-kilogram bags using ready-made, open-mouth bags. In 2001, PBEI | SEPTEMBER 2008 21 however, EWOS managers decided to replace the bagging machine dedicated to the lower-capacity line. “It was outdated, like over 15 years old,” Wright said. “It was worn out, and you couldn’t get parts.” The capacity was also limited. “The capacity was OK for the smaller extruder, but it wouldn’t have been for the other,” Wright said. “The old machine wasn’t flexible enough for two lines.” In evaluating the options, Wright found that a form-fill-seal (FFS) bagging system had enough capacity for both process lines. Using one packaging line instead of two held the potential for reducing labor costs, because workers would only need to tend one operation, not two. EWOS would keep the other, larger bagging machine as a fail-safe. An FFS bagging system could also reduce the cost of bags. Instead of buying ready-made bags, EWOS could buy large, pre-printed reels of plastic tube stock and feed it through the FFS machine. The main difficulty in using a single packaging system, Wright said, was transferring the feed from the larger process line to the new FFS system, which would be on the other side of the plant. New system After contacting three equipment suppliers about the job, Wright selected a proposal from Richard Simon Limited, a business unit of Canada-based Premier Tech Systems, located in Nottingham, UK. The proposal called for a packaging system that used the supplier’s UBM net weigher, a vertical FFS machine, a robotic palletizer, a stretchwrapper, and a pallet conveyor. The proposal also specified a dense-phase pneumatic conveyor to move fish feed from the larger process line to the FFS system. Richard Simon Limited would act as project manager. The proposal “wasn’t the cheapest,” Wright said, but it appealed to him for other reasons. “We had used some of their equipment, so we knew what we were getting. We also knew their field
Page 1: POWDERandBULK ENGINEERINGInternatio
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Page 7 and 8: Why Choose K-Tron Feeders and Premi
Page 9 and 10: pack PROCESSES AND PACKAG- ING 2008
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Page 17 and 18: Figure 6 A semi-bulk filling statio
Page 19 and 20: First-in, first-out flow Actual inv
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Page 27 and 28: Rotary batch drying system has 48-c
Page 29 and 30: Working together, the dryers handle
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Page 37 and 38: Supplier Notes K-Tron moves product
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