Ishida has recently installed a 20 head multihead weigher at leading Italian food manufacturer Martini Alimentare. According to the company, the equipment has delivered an immediate 2% improvement in product giveaway and enabled the company to increase production capacity by 25%.
The Ishida CCW-R-220 is handling a range of fresh and frozen breaded products such as chicken nuggets for discharge into trays at target weights of between 200g and 3 kilos.
“Naturally we looked at other options, but with my knowledge of Ishida, I felt confident that the company would be able to find the right solution for this project,” said Claudio Cabassi, production general manager at Martini Alimentare.
As well as improved accuracy, Martini has reduced manpower on the line by half compared to the hand weighing operation that it previously employed, according to a company statement.
The weigher is divided into two 10-head sections, each side capable of weighing up to 60 packs per minute to give a combined throughput of around 120 packs, but Martini Alimentare aims to gradually increase speed to around 160 packs per minute. The flexibility of the split weigher enables Martini to simultaneously handle different products or the same product at different weights.
In order to facilitate packing of the product into the shallow trays, Ishida’s Italian agent Itech AG has devised a bespoke distribution system. The weighed product is transferred into a special discharge hopper. This holds the product and then moves along the line with the tray to gradually deposit the product into the moving tray for a more even distribution of the nuggets.
The Ishida weigher is part of Martini Alimentare’s on-going investment to further automate its production processes.
“The new weigher has made an immediate difference in terms of production and efficiency improvement. Nevertheless, we are only at the start of the process and we know that, as we become more familiar with the line, we can achieve an even better performance in terms of speed, accuracy and reduced manpower requirements and that is what we will be working on to deliver in the coming months,” said Cabassi.