VISITUS - Food Business Gulf & Middle East

6NEWSl each), the Finns (37.8 l) and the British (35.3l, Euromonitor). The industry is backing drinkswith added benefits, e.g. “for healthy cells”,“for the concentration”, “for nerves andmuscles” or “for a healthy heart”. Fresh-pressedand - their special feature - non-pasteurized fruitjuices that are said to retain all vitamins,nutrients and minerals are also in line with thehealth trend.New logistic installation forAstra faamIn the year 2005 MPS Food Logistic Systemsautomated the intra logistic requirements at thepremises of Astra Faam. Located in the northernpart of the Netherlands, Astra Faam (memberof the Astra Sweets Group) produces thefamous “Frisia marshmallows”, and can berecognised as being market leader in its field ofsweets production and sales.The Frisia marshmallow sweets are producedfrom mainly glucose, gelatine and sugar.By the end of last year the core part (heart)of the production, all packaging area and thedynamic buffer storage at Astra was destroyedin a fire. All production came to a “stand-still”and urgent replacement of productionequipment and the intra logistics was needed.As MPS Food LogisticSystems and also MPS Service & Spares wewere asked for help and assistance inrebuilding the temporary and final productionincluding the realisation with updated intralogistic systems and warehousing.Marshmallows are produced in continuousbatch processes. Due to the differences inproduct flavours, sweets shape and colours itneeds to dry and being stored for a few daysand can be mixed only during the moment ofpackaging in its bag packing.The difficulty here with this kind of productand production is thus how these humiditysensitive products can be stored withoutdeforming and being sorted by batch.Second difficulty is how can, depending onthe customer requirements, products beretrieved from the ware housing's dynamicbuffer and mixed in a just-in-time processwithout causing downtime in the automaticmixing and packaging units.By knowing the open products since 2005and the need of products to be transported andstored in a dry and hygienic environment, MPSFood Logistic Systems made use of its years ofexperience with open food products in themeat, poultry, dairy, cheese and fast food /snack industry.Insuring the products can be dried and keptdry a continuous airflow around the products isneeded. By using open plastic crates withmazes in side walls and by storing the cratesindividually in an open dynamic buffer store,multiple functions for realising an optimalproduct could be combined. The products arestored in humidity and temperature controlledenvironment. The design of the crate bufferstorage is such that continuous air flow aroundthe open crates is guaranteed.This thus takes care of the proper productdrying in all places of the rack. Another benefitof using this method of storing products by thebatch control with a FIFO (First in - First out)principle.Each crate has its own electronicidentification tag (unique number identification)sealed into the crates (RFID). The product andproduction data is combined with the crate IDand used as data-point in the WMSWarehouse Management System. Each cratenow has its own (temporary) place within thecrate buffer storage.FOOD BUSINESS GULF & MIDDLE EAST OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2012