Germany-based East European food wholesaler Monolith Fleisch und Teigwaren is using Ishida mulithead weighing technology to substantially increase its output and embark on a major product enhancement and product development program.
The company sells specialty foods, such as Russian-style filled dumplings, known as Pelmeni.
Originally, the dumplings were fed into a bagmaker via a linear weigher.
The accuracy was not ideal, but the main problem was the low speed, which meant the packing process was being bottlenecked, and adding more weighers of the same type was not an option because of space constraints.
It installed an Ishida multihead weigher as a drop-in replacement for the linear model, leaving the rest of the line in place.
This has doubled production output from eight tons to 16 tons of Pelmeni per day.
In order to achieve high speeds, while maintaining the quality of the fragile frozen Pelmeni, the 14-head weigher is fitted with a number of measures to cushion the pasta parcels on their path through to the bagmaker.
Brought to the top of the weigher in a flighted elevator with plastic contact parts, they are channeled via a funnel and a plastic collar onto the plastic-coated dispersion table.
On exiting the weigh hoppers, the dumplings, each weighing about 13g, are prevented from colliding with each other by a shock-absorbent plastic pole suspended in the discharge chute, which is plastic-lined.
“While previously 480g might end up in a 450g pack, today overfill stays reliably below 1%,” says quality manager Mustafa Kray.
The weigher is also designed to enable thorough cleaning while keeping associated downtime to an absolute minimum, further boosting production.
Contact parts can be lifted off and, once cleaned, dropped back into place without any tools.
The three liter hoppers are interchangeable, as are the radial feeders.
Individual hoppers can be removed and replaced during operation without materially affecting accuracy.
The site is producing more than 20 varieties, including exotic versions such as quark and strawberry-filled dumplings.
The new line is packing at target weights of 450g, 500g, 1kg and 1.5kg – twice as many as before.
