New Ishida Centre of Excellence offers 360º view of ... - Ishida Europe

New line makes special
offers easier to handle,
in more ways than one
A very compact packing line incorporating an Ishida multihead weigher enables
Fredag AG to respond to urgent orders for products such as chicken nuggets.
Convenience food manufacturer Fredag AG is
increasingly asked to package large quantities
of special offers at short notice. A dedicated
handling facility was needed, but floor space
was at a premium for an installation that would
only be used intermittently. The solution was a
fast but highly compact packing line based
around an Ishida CCW-RS multihead weigher.
Demanding clients
Based in the Swiss Canton of Lucerne, Fredag
produces some 6,500 tonnes of convenience
foods annually. Besides food service, catering
and fast-food customers, it services major
retailers such as Coop and Migros who follow
the growing trend to place urgent orders for
special offers. After approaching several
suppliers, Fredag AG turned to the Swiss Ishida
agent Itech AG in Rotkreuz to devise a packing
line to handle these orders.
Space was a challenge
Itech and Ishida faced some tough design
challenges. Because of limited room for
expansion, the packing line had to occupy the
least possible factory floor space and had to
fit into a room only four metres high. A further
requirement was careful product handling, as
Fredag considers it vital that its fish and poultry
nuggets remain evenly breaded to preserve
their appearance.
Compact but efficient
Fredag’s CCW-RS multihead weigher installation
was specially designed to save space. For
instance, the conveyors which feed the CCW-RS
are steeply angled at 65º, yet despite this no
product is spilled. With no room for a support
structure, the gantry and the weigher are
fastened directly to the plant’s ceiling, so
problems of weight, vibration and the cabling
had to be overcome. As a further space-saving
measure, the trolley-mounted filling system can
be removed from between the weigher and
the thermoformer when the packing line is
not running.
Delicate handling
The Ishida CCW-RS is designed to carefully
handle products with challenging flow properties
like Fredag’s nuggets. The vibration frequencies
of the weigher and its feed system are
adjustable to ensure even product flow. To
eliminate sticking, all contact parts are made
from embossed stainless steel, and all transfer
points on the system are designed to ensure the
bread coating of the nuggets remains intact.
Efficient changeover
The new line often requires three product
changes a day. When the same type of product
is involved, changeover just means pressing a
button. Washing down when changing between
fish and poultry is facilitated because the
waterproof CCW-RS can simply be hosed down.
Water is readily removed from the gently-angled
surface of the gantry. All contact parts can be
removed, without tools, for hosing down.
Speed with accuracy
With 1kg trays, the packing line has an hourly
capacity of 2,000 trays, which increases to 2,650
per hour with 200g and 500g trays. Yet filling
accuracy is within 3g with a 500g tray. “Meat is
particularly expensive in Switzerland”, points out
Fredag’s Plant Director Phillipp Keller, “so we
are very keen to minimise giveaway”.
More orders mean fast payback
Phillipp Keller expresses his satisfaction with the
installation which has been in operation since
February 2011: “This new packing line has
enabled Fredag to supply special offers in high
quantities at very short notice. We are now able
to accept orders we would have been obliged to
turn down in the past.” He expects that the new
CCW-RS installation will have paid for itself
within four years.
Our teams are
close to yours
For your nearest agent or
distributor, contact your nearest
Ishida Sales Office, below:
Ishida Europe Limited
11 Kettles Wood Drive
Woodgate Business Park
Birmingham B32 3DB
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)121 607 7700
Fax: +44 (0)121 607 7666
info@ishidaeurope.com
Ishida Czech Republic
Tel: +420 317 844 059
Fax: +420 317 844 052
info@ishidaeurope.cz
Ishida France
Tel: +33 (0)1 48 63 83 83
Fax: +33 (0)1 48 63 24 29
info@ishidaeurope.fr
Ishida Germany
Tel: +49 (0)791 945 160
Fax: +49 (0)791 945 1699
info@ishida.de
Ishida Middle East
Tel: +971 (0)4 299 1933
Fax: +971 (0)4 299 1955
ishida@ishida.ae
Ishida Netherlands
Tel: +31 (0)499 39 3675
Fax: +31 (0)499 39 1887
info@ishida.nl
Ishida Romania
Tel: +40 (0)21 589 73 52
Fax: +40 (0)21 310 34 22
info@ishidaeurope.ro
Ishida South Africa
Tel: +27 (0)11 976 2010
Fax: +27 (0)11 976 2012
info@ishida.co.za
Ishida Switzerland
Tel: +41 (0)41 799 7999
Fax: +41 (0)41 790 3927
info@ishida.ch
www.ishidaeurope.com
News
NACHRICHTEN NOUVELLES
New Ishida Centre
of Excellence offers
360º view of real
solutions at work
The new Ishida Demonstration Facility in Birmingham, UK, offers realistic
production runs across a wide range of food industry conditions, enabling
customers to see equipment packing their own or related products. It also
provides a testing ground for solutions development and for fine-tuning of
existing lines.
The new facility can test entire packing lines
under ambient or chilled (e.g. 2°C) temperatures.
It can handle wet products as well as dry, with
hygienic-room features such as self-draining
floors and easy-washdown surfaces, and includes
high-care and low-care changing facilities.
Extensive refrigerated storage is available on
site, allowing trials to be prolonged if necessary.
Observation, the key to a useful trial
The area is equipped with special windows for
direct observation or for viewing via webcam
from remote sites.
Richard Brown, General Manager - EMEA
Projects at Ishida Europe, believes customers
will be able to predict much more clearly the
Poultry pieces Fruit &
vegetable seeds
overall performance of equipment working as a
complete line. “For example, we’ve just set up a
test line for a poultry manufacturer in the Middle
East, and delivered detailed information about
the products’ shelf-life.”
Encouraging innovation
Richard Brown sees the new facility as much
more than just an aid to efficiency.
“Ishida and its customers have always thrived on
a process where new ideas are tried out on a
practical scale in real industrial environments.
This improved trial facility shortens and speeds
up that vital development loop for many projects,
with no interruption of customers’ existing
production. I’m sure it will go beyond increases
in efficiency and encourage a culture of
innovation that will ultimately impact customer
profits even more strongly.”
Customers should contact their nearest
Ishida office for further information and
trial booking details.
Beansprouts Rehydrated
soft fruit
ISSUE 33 - SPRING 2012
New
i-Care
service
delivers
24-hour
access to
spare parts
Ishida Europe has long had a
policy of deploying support, and
specifically spare parts, so as to
be as close as possible to
customers in time and space.
Fully in keeping with this approach, the
company has now launched i-Care. This
service offers customers 24-hour access,
seven days a week, to manuals of parts,
spares and consumables for all current Ishida
equipment, and for many ‘legacy’ models.
“Having identified what you need,” comments
Chris Deckx, General Manager Customer
Services, “you can order it right away and, if
it’s in stock, it will often go out the same day.”
Customers wishing to use the service should
email spares@ishidaeurope.com to request
secure log-in details and instructions.
Chicken
nuggets
www.ishidaeurope.com

x-ray
The coreless, stainless
steel screws of the
Ishida Screw Feeder
Weighers gently but
firmly move the product
through to the weigh
hoppers. The system
works equally well for
bone-in or boneless
cuts, and for other
fresh meat products.
multihead weigher pick-and-place casepacker traysealer
complete lines
fresh food weigher snacks bagmaker
Prioskolie goes for fast,
high-accuracy packing of
poultry pieces
The Meyn-Ishida alliance has completed the installation of a chicken processing and packing plant in Russia’s
Belgorod province for poultry giant ZAO Prioskolie. The state-of-the-art plant includes Ishida’s recently-developed
weigh-batching technology, which has revolutionised the speed, accuracy and compactness of styling and
packing operations.
Prioskolie is Russia’s largest poultry producer,
involved in breeding, rearing, feed production
and processing. Meyn-Ishida is an alliance
formed between Ishida and Meyn, the leading
poultry processing equipment and systems
producer, in order to offer complete, singlesource
processing and packing plants, typically
on greenfield sites.
Scope of work
Prioskolie wished to scale up its operations and
at the same time to reap the benefits of an
integrated manufacturing execution system from
a single supplier. Specifically, the company was
looking for a plant that could ensure the highest
yield from each delivery of live birds, together
with the most efficient use of manpower and
automation, and the fullest degree of control
and traceability.
This implied that the chosen supplier would need
to be expert in every department, from live bird
handling and gas stunning through to the
management of crates and trays.
Meyn-Ishida was selected by Prioskolie to
design, supply and install a new 10,500bph
(birds per hour) plant at Valuyki, to be capable
of expansion to 12,000bph.
From whole chicken to pack
of pieces
In Meyn-Ishida’s integrated plant design, plucked
and eviscerated birds are automatically assessed
for packing whole or for cut-up. Overall, about
50% follow the whole-bird packing channel, while
50% are rehung and enter one of the two cut up
lines. This versatile section can be programmed
to cut to a number of different patterns, yielding
a wide variety of pieces, following the sequence
wings-breasts-legs.
Whatever the piece-pattern chosen, the resulting
pieces are fed to four complete lines, each
capable of composing well-styled, tightly weightcontrolled
packs of wings, legs, breasts or other
cuts, then delivering them for flow-wrapping,
labelling, placing in crates and palletising.
Goodbye to grading
An efficient poultry processing factory can
convert a single bird into its programmed
cut-up pieces within minutes. To operate at
today’s speeds of thousands of birds per hour,
all these pieces need to be handled as separate
streams from the second they are produced.
There can be no ‘queuing’ of breasts behind
legs behind wings.
So each cut needs a separate processing
channel. To dedicate a bulky grader to each
would be enormously expensive in terms of
space alone, and would not produce particularly
accurate pack weights. Until recently this was
nevertheless the way most poultry processing
and packing factories operated.
Weigh-batching: today’s way forward
The solution adapted at Prioskolie and other
recent Meyn-Ishida installations is to produce
highly accurate weighments at high speed which
are then placed in trays and all necessary
manual adjustments made to ensure perfect
presentation. This is achieved using Ishida
Weigh-Batchers.
Each of the four weigh-batchers at Prioskolie
comprises an Ishida R-Series Multihead Weigher,
a 16-station batching table and the belts,
diverters and signalling systems that enable
optimal synergy between automation and
human operators.
The Ishida weighers are Screw Feeder models,
able to handle sticky chicken and other fresh
meat gently but at high speed. Belts positioned
a few feet above the work surface take the
weighments towards the workstations. As a
weighment approaches a workstation which has
capacity, a diverter arm sweeps the product off
the belt into the upper level of the station, where
it is held over a gate, while a light indicates its
presence to the operator.
When ready, the operator pushes into place
an ‘intermediate’ tray, which causes the gate to
open and the weighment to fall into the tray.
The operator transfers the contents of the
intermediate tray to a packing tray, and positions
them for optimum presentation. The packed tray
is then placed on a belt leading to the wrapping
and labelling section. When the operator is
ready, he or she pushes the empty intermediate
tray back into place, triggering the release of the
next weighment.
More chickens per hour
Prioskolie are very pleased with the resultant
throughput. An entire batch of over 24,000 birds
can be handled from live entry to flow-wrapped
trays in about 2 hours 20 minutes.
checkweigher
For a single 830g pack of drumsticks, for
example, the whole process from cut-up
system to flow-wrapped tray takes as little as
60 seconds.
The weigh-batcher performance capacity
is 40tpm (trays per minute). The target
performance is 32tpm.
Improved yield
The weigh-batcher approach is very accurate
indeed. Giveaway is very low, despite the
demanding minimum weight regulations that
operate in Russia. For wings and thighs it is
as little as 0.2%.
A highly efficient operation
As regards efficiency, according to Production
Manager Sergej Vyacheslavovich Chasovskikh,
the availability of the equipment is 95%, while
performance is 80% and quality is 97%, giving an
overall equipment efficiency (OEE) for weighing
and packing of over 73.7%.
Prioskolie were impressed not just with the
technology of the new plant, but with the extent
to which Meyn-Ishida were able to integrate
across all activities. For example, each multihead
weigher can assess the input of pieces it is
receiving and cue the cut-up centre to send it
lighter, heavier or more varied pieces to help it
improve pack weight accuracy.
“In the end, what it comes down to”, says
Sergej Vyacheslavovich Chasovskikh, “is
value for money.”
Staff manning the batching sections of three of the
Ishida Weigh-Batchers. Eight people per batcher
can comfortably handle the cut-up pieces from a
10,500 birds-per-hour throughput. The remaining 8
stations per batching table allow plenty of room for
future expansion.
2 3

It takes one
“little wonder”
to weigh another
One of South Africa’s leading seed companies has installed
an Ishida ‘Lilliput’ multihead weigher to increase capacity
and provide greater control over pack fill accuracy, which is
of crucial importance in this highly competitive business.
A single seed often has the potential to produce
many kilograms of fruit or vegetables. Yet a Little
Wonder tomato seed, for instance, measures just
two millimetres across and weighs less than
0.002g. This large ratio of value to weight means
that getting products into packs is a crucial part
of a seed merchant’s business and any advance
in accuracy can directly affect the bottom line.
A world-class seed company
Few companies can claim more experience in
the seed business than Starke Ayres Pty Ltd, of
South Africa, which continues to thrive after 135
years in the industry. Starke Ayres is strongly
focused on research, development and breeding
of vegetable seed cultivars, and in production,
marketing and distribution.
From its headquarters, based on a farm to the
east of Johannesburg, the company markets and
distributes to commercial vegetable growers in
many countries across Africa, North and South
America, Europe and the Mediterranean as well
as Australia.
Starke Ayres develops and breeds its own high
quality hybrid vegetable varieties. Breeding
programmes are focused on tomatoes,
pumpkins, zucchini, butternut squash, sweet
corn and peppers. The company also has a
strong national retail component supplying
hobbyists with vegetable and flower seeds as
well as a range of pesticides and plant nutrients.
4
Reasons for automation
Starke Ayres produce a great variety of pack
sizes, mainly within the range 0.33g to 100g.
Packing seeds by hand is highly labour-intensive.
In manually weighing 1000 hybrid tomato seeds,
for example, overweight at the level of over 5% is
unavoidable in order to be absolutely sure that
the pack contents will measure up to the
declared content, not to mention the critical eye
of the grower.
Knowing that multihead weighing could
transform this situation, Starke Ayres looked into
the available options and chose an Ishida CCW-
M-214W-S/005-SS. Known as the ‘Lilliput’
because of its small size (it has a 650mm x
650mm footprint and 0.5 litre hoppers), it is
designed to handle very small target weights
with great accuracy and speed.
Reducing giveaway by more
than half
The Ishida Lilliput at Starke Ayres has brought
giveaway down to just 2%, a reduction of 60%.
This means that for every 35 packs or so, a given
batch of seed will yield one extra pack.
Automatic weighing on the Ishida achieves this
while practically eliminating the possibility of any
underweight packs reaching the grower,
something that manual weighing could never
accomplish with such a low level of giveaway.
Starke Ayres Factory Manager Tewie Pretorius (left)
and Operations Director Danny van der Westhuizen.
The new Ishida has speeded up packing and
distribution.
A surge in speed
Seed is delivered to the top of the Ishida using a
vacuum system. It passes through the weigher
driven by gravity with the assistance of a
powerful vibratory system. To prevent air currents
from interfering with the process, the entire
machine is enclosed in a transparent case.
At the outlet of the discharge chute of the Ishida,
weighed product falls into a bagmaker. The filled
and sealed bags are bundled and palleted.
With manual weighing, the packing process ran
at between 15 and 20 packs per minute. The
Ishida has increased this by well over 250%, with
a typical speed of 52 packs per minute.
Business benefits
Apart from the primary benefit of consistent pack
weights, the new multihead has speeded up
distribution and, of course, increased capacity
while markedly reducing labour costs.
Starke Ayres also believes it benefited from the
services surrounding the weigher. “The after
sales support and training given by Ishida was
outstanding,’’ says Tewie Pretorius, Factory
Manager at the company’s vegetable seed
packing plant.
multihead weigher x-ray
fresh food weigher
snacks bagmaker
Building a business on bean sprouts:
the role of Ishida multihead weighers
Heng Sieng SA imports mung bean seeds from Asia and germinates them to produce quality fresh bean sprouts.
The company has transformed itself from a cottage industry serving the local catering trade to a major supplier
across Europe, with its own well-known Sojalor brand. Ishida multihead weighers have played an important part
in the transition.
The Ly family originally arrived in France as
refugees from Vietnam. Mr Ly ran an Oriental
grocery in Metz before realising that the growing
interest in fresh Oriental cuisine meant that bean
sprouts would be in continuing demand. 20
years ago he set up Heng Sieng SA.
Now the company is France’s biggest producer
of bean sprouts, with an output of 7200 tonnes
and a turnover of €5m annually. It recently
moved to a 9000m2 site at Dieuze, north east
of Nancy.
Getting the process just right
For a time, the company produced just one
tonne per week, as it perfected its own method of
germinating the sprouts, using nothing other than
time, a controlled atmosphere and pure water.
pick-and-place casepacker
Scaling up in line with demand
When CEO Mr Ly decided to automate the
packing stage, he looked for a method that
could overcome the tendency of the sprouts to
stick to contact surfaces yet would avoid
damaging the delicate product whose appeal
lies largely in its crunchy freshness.
As Heng Sieng Maintenance Manager Mr
Raphaël Dupont says “That’s why he naturally
went to Ishida”.
The right choice
The Ishida CCW-R-214-WS-50-WP was the right
choice in these respects. Its stainless steel, hexembossed
contact parts discourage sticking
and the large (5L) double-opening hoppers
encourage a decisive transfer of product from
pool to weigh hopper and from weigh hopper to
discharge chute, while protecting the sensitive
shoots from crushing or tearing.
checkweigher
traysealer
Having first bought one of these weighers in
2005, Heng Sieng has just bought another, as
closely identical as possible, given the six-year
gap and Ishida’s continuous development policy.
The two machines, mounted on gantries above
vertical bagmakers, and fed by flighted elevators,
dominate the packing hall at the new Dieuze site.
The speeds attainable by the two machines
(about 80 bags per minute for the 500g bags
and 35 bags per minute for the 4kg bags) are
currently held in check by the performance of
the bagmakers, but the resultant throughput is
perfectly adequate for current needs and leaves
plenty of room for handling increasing demand.
Strong emphasis on hygiene
and safety
The Europe-wide scare concerning bean sprout
hygiene affected many producers adversely,
even though the problem was tracked down
to a specific source in Germany. Heng Sieng
was well-placed to weather the storm, having
already had strong hygiene measures (in
accordance with HACCP guidelines) in place,
and a process that involves no manure or
chemicals. An in-house department, working
with external independent laboratories, is
dedicated full time to assure the quality of
process and product, enabling the company
to state unequivocally that its products are free
of the microorganisms concerned.
The hygienic design of the Ishida weighers,
with their waterproof bodies and contact parts
that lift off for cleaning, is very much in tune
with these measures.
complete lines
5

Perfect hygiene, rapid changeovers: the packing
goals set by France’s maestro of dried fruit
France’s brand leader in dried and soft fruit, and the world’s third largest producer of prunes, has just completed
the modernisation of its flagship factory in which a new packing hall is used to weigh and bag fruit directly after
rehydration and sorting.
An automation partner who could fully complement the company’s vast fruit-handling expertise was needed and
Maître Prunille chose Ishida to work with from the earliest design phase.
Apart from their nutritional benefits, prunes
are an important ingredient in cooking. This is
especially true in France, where Maître Prunille
sells the bulk of the Pruneaux d’Agen (as famous
in their own right as foie gras or Armagnac) that
made the company’s name. However, it is
increasingly true in the rest of Europe, while
prunes have always had a favoured role in
Middle Eastern and North African cuisine.
Nowadays the company also handles many
other soft fruit, whether grown locally or
imported from other parts of France or abroad.
The local fruit are harvested and their moisture
content reduced to about 23% by ‘drying
cooperatives’ in the region. Twenty four of these
cooperatives make up France Prune, Maître
Prunille’s parent organisation.
The Ishida weighers are equally at home weighing
18-hour continuous product runs or adapting
(in 15 minutes or less) for rapid changeovers.
The dried fruit are rehydrated to a moisture level
about 35% of the original. They are immediately
packed into in Stabilo or Quatroseal bags for
both home and export markets, with a shelf life of
9-18 months, depending on the grade of product.
A major investment
The new packing hall, at the company’s
Casseneuil site near Villeneuve-sur-Lot,
represents a considerable investment by Maître
Prunille. It has five separate lines, each including
a sorting area (which also functions as a buffer),
an Ishida multihead weigher and a vertical
bagmaker. The last two lines were installed in
January 2012, the culmination of a grand plan
begun five years earlier.
They are complemented by an impressive
array of end-of-line equipment, including Ishida
checkweighers with built-in metal detectors,
supported by Ishida’s IDCS software which
enables the company to accumulate
production line data that can help increase
efficiency. An Ishida IX-GA 6510 X-Ray
Inspection System stands guard over the final
product and links into Maître Prunille’s data
systems to ensure traceability.
The whole project is part of a development vision
conceived by CEO Xavier Picard and Industrial
Director Philippe Moutier back in 2007. Frédéric
Crispel, in charge of industrial development,
foresees a decade or more of service from the
packing lines. He describes the new hall as
“…a tool for the 21st Century.”
Cleanability wins the day
With soft fruit harvests varying greatly with the
weather, the French market has its times of
surplus, during which a thriving export trade is
an important asset. It was very important to
Maître Prunille to have the ability to make the
frequent production changes demanded by the
export side, now taking 30% of output, with its
many different products, pack sizes and labels.
Hygiene is an important issue in rehydrated fruit
packing. The shelf life of the product could be
reduced if spores, yeasts and moulds were not
Ishida checkweighers, together with their IDCS
(Ishida Data Capture System) software, are
providing Maître Prunille with a rich vein of data
with which to monitor and improve efficiency.
kept out of the process. So the amount of time
taken to clean equipment thoroughly is crucial
to a fast product changeover, and therefore to
fulfilling a wide range of different orders
efficiently.
As Philippe Moutier, Industrial Director of Maître
Prunille, explains “The concept of cleanability
of production equipment is important from
the point of view of hygiene and the risk of
cross contamination.”
In fact, Maître Prunille takes the issue so
seriously that the company has its own tests for
equipment cleanability and it was largely on the
basis of their performance in this respect that
Ishida multihead weighers won out during the
initial tendering process.
x-ray
multihead weigher pick-and-place casepacker traysealer
complete lines
fresh food weigher snacks bagmaker
Prior to this, Ishida was already well-known to
the company, which had purchased two Ishida
Fresh Food Weighers to handle sticky dried fruit
back in 2005.
Designed for rapid hygiene
Each Ishida Weigher has 14-heads, with 3-litre
hoppers. The main body, with its rounded
construction, is simple to hose down and offers
no ‘traps’ for spores or other contaminants to
linger in. All contact parts, including feeder
troughs and hoppers can be lifted off the
machine without the need for any tools and
hung on a special Ishida “wash wall” nearby,
where a whole set can be cleaned by spraying
in 5 minutes.
The pay-off
Maître Prunille’s choice has proven to be welljustified.
For volume production runs (which can
last up to 18 hours) the legendary reliability of
Ishida equipment comes to the fore. And altering
such parameters as pack format or fruit grade
takes just seconds using the presets
programmed into the machines.
However, for those crucial points, for example,
where cross-contamination could be an issue,
changeovers with thorough cleaning can be
accomplished in less than 15 minutes.
Market-driven
Maître Prunille’s new packing hall is a unique
project in many ways, not least because of
checkweigher
the close partnership in which Ishida has gone
far beyond the role of a manufacturer and
contributed packing expertise and ideas on
matters such as overall concept, hall layout
and infeed and elevator design. Ishida Integrated
Solutions has worked closely with Maître
Prunille’s technical management and with Poly
Concept Inox, the other main supplier to the
project.
The thinking behind it has been driven by the
market, specifically by the current and forecast
needs of Maître Prunille’s many customers, who
Frédéric Crispel sees as “…helping us to raise
our game. Particularly our Anglo-Saxon
customers who demand BRC or IFS certification.”
6 7