New weighers reduce puff pastry rejects
The installation of two Ishida multihead weighers and two checkweighers at leading puff pastry manufacturer Cansimag France SA has halved the rate of product breakages as well as increasing weighing speed and accuracy.
Cansimag France SA manufactures salted, pure butter puff pastry both flat and twisted, sold in bags and trays from 40 to 150g. The light, flaky texture of puff pastry snacks is one of their chief attractions. However, this fragility also presents a major handling challenge during weighing and packing.
To solve this problem, the two Ishida multihead weighers are mounted side by side on a gantry over vertical bagmakers. The weighers are special 12-head models for fragile products, with each of the pool hoppers located above a pair of weigh hoppers, making 24 weigh hoppers in all. Each pool hopper discharges into either the left or the right of this pair, making the arrangement extremely compact and minimising the distance that the fragile product has to fall.
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On release from the weigh hoppers, the product meets a lining of impact-absorbing plastic in the discharge chute. The chute itself is at a shallow angle, in order to reduce the impact with which the product hits the film as the bag is formed.
Cansimag reports that the rate of breakage of the twisted products is now just 2%, only half of what it was on the old line. The reject rate is also very low and the deviation from the target weight is less than 1%. By using pair type hoppers, weighing speeds of 200 packs per minute are being achieved.
The Ishida multihead weighers can also be used to make very accurate and consistent mixtures. A two-mix product, for example, is being weighed at the rate of up to 100 packs per minute.
Ishida Europe was chosen to provide the new equipment thanks to its technical know-how and European leadership in the field of multihead weighing.
“It was essential to increase the automation of our processes and so improve our productivity, while maintaining quality at a high level,” explains Pascal Schnell General Manager of Cansimag France SA. “Today, the performance criteria have been met to our complete satisfaction.”
