With food manufacturers still grappling with high raw material and energy prices as well as skills and labour shortages, the Ishida stand at this year’s PPMA Show will demonstrate how the company’s extensive range of automation solutions helps to maximise throughput and operational efficiencies while at the same time enhancing product and pack quality and ensuring high levels of food safety.
Ishida’s exhibits include the top of the range CCW-AS multihead weigher and the unique Fresh Food Weigher (FFW), demonstrating the huge versatility of the company’s weigher ranges, together with the recently launched IX-PD X-ray inspection system and award-winning QX-500 tray sealer.
“With markets remaining competitive and manufacturers having to deal with legislative requirements, stringent retailer standards and changing consumer demands, the need for packaging equipment solutions that get things right first time has never been greater,” said Paul Hitchin, Ishida’s General Sales Manager for the UK.
“Our PPMA stand will highlight our diverse capabilities across all areas of weighing, packing and quality control and our experts will be on hand to discuss specific automation requirements as well as how our equipment can be integrated to deliver “wall-to-wall” solutions.”
The recently launched CCW-AS multihead weigher range helps manufacturers to achieve the highest weighing speeds whilst maintaining close to 100% weighing accuracy and consistency. The CCW-AS range features powerful, highly responsive radial feeders which provide more conveying power than conventional feeders to increase speed and accuracy, reduce product giveaway and help increase output and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) levels. At the same time, it delivers a 20% reduction in energy consumption compared with previous models whilst noise levels have also been further reduced.
The top of the range Ishida IX-PD X-ray inspection system incorporates new sensor and image processing technology to achieve the highest level of detection sensitivity and deliver effective food safety and quality monitoring. It can identify both low-density and very small size foreign bodies, such as bones in fish fillets and stainless steel wires, with excellent accuracy, whilst enabling manufacturers to maintain high productivity rates. The new model is also able to reliably detect foreign bodies in applications where products are overlapping or standing up in a pack. The IX-PD has demonstrated in tests near 100% detection rates for bones in chicken, diced meat and sausages. This ability to accurately recognise the difference between food and foreign bodies reduces false detections and enables companies to maintain stringent quality control procedures without compromising throughput.
The Ishida QX-500 tray sealer makes its debut at the PPMA Show following its success at last year’s PPMA Awards, where it won the Innovative Packaging Machinery category.
The QX-500 delivers a 66% increase in cycle speed, a 44% reduction in weight, a 46% reduction in size and a 50% reduction in energy consumption.
The machine’s sustainable design also includes the introduction of highly efficient servo motor technology which minimises energy consumption and cost of operation.
In addition, a strong focus on the thermo-performance of the tool has removed the need for water cooling and thus the need for a water chiller.
Equally important, the tray sealer ensures consistently high-quality seals, contributes to the reduction of food- and packaging waste and offers a major increase in packing line productivity.
The 6-head Ishida R2-106 FFW has been specifically designed for the accurate weighing of sticky and bruise-sensitive fresh products such as fresh and marinated meat, poultry, seafood, cut fruit, cheese and ready meals.
The FFW features belt feeders and anti-stick hoppers with scraper gates that prevent build-up of sticky products. Despite its utilisation for challenging products, product giveaway is less than 1% of pack weight and labour costs can be reduced by typically three operators per shift. The FFW’s compact dimensions also make it ideal for factories with space and height restrictions.
