Food Manufacturing

NORD geared motors have surface treatment for salty environment

Krijn Verwijs is one of Europe's foremost suppliers of shellfish products including oysters, lobster and in particular fresh blue or common mussels. In its Yerseke, Netherlands-based shellfish production centre, rapid drive corrosion due to the seawater-infused atmosphere has long been a major concern. NORD aluminium geared motors with a special surface conversion treatment now provides an economical solution to resolve this issue.

20th February 2015

robolink helps robots break free

For reasons of safety, industrial robots tend to be segregated from humans, which can restrict the types of tasks that robots perform. This has led robot technologists to search for ways to set robots free from their cages. If this can be achieved, the combination of dexterity and problem-solving skills of humans along with precision and strength of robots can be fully harnessed.

19th February 2015

Innovative inspection system for food and beverage industry

RNA Automation was recently approached with a request for a fully automated quality control and inspection system to handle and inspect plastic moulded components. The request related to a UK-based production requirement for a global leader in the food and beverage industry.

16th February 2015

Remote access support and diagnostics minimise downtime

By installing eWON VPN routers and using the Talk2M Internet-based remote access system, food packaging company Proseal UK can now securely access, diagnose and quickly resolve issues on its tray sealing machines located anywhere in the world, via secure broadband connections.

10th February 2015

Infra-red heating systems helps maintain chocolate quality

A precisely controllable, two-zone carbon infra-red heating system from Heraeus Noblelight is helping to ensure consistent chocolate quality at Ashbury Chocolates Ltd, of Corby, by pre-heating chocolate moulds prior to filling. The quartz infra-red system also saves considerable space over the metal element heating system which was previously employed.

23rd January 2015

Bakery saves EUR27,000 per year thanks to NSK bearings

NSK's Molded-Oil bearing technology has produced annual savings of more than EUR27,000 for a major food producer on the operation of the main make-up conveyor within a bakery. The producer was experiencing failures every 6 weeks with approximately 36 bearings being replaced every year, which was causing considerable downtime and lost production.

23rd January 2015

Overhead conveyor powered by Bauer improves plant productivity

While forklifts are excellent tools for transporting heavy pallets from place to place, they can also pose a very real risk to employee safety and cause damage to stock; this is especially true in a busy working environment. One Swiss drinks manufacturer found that its bottling plant was so busy that driver error was having a real impact on productivity. Fortunately it was able to reduce operating costs and increase productivity by installing an electrical overhead conveyor (EOC) with vehicles powered by Bauer Gear Motor.

14th January 2015

Coffee manufacturer gets lean with the help of robotic palletise

To increase the speed and efficiency of a coffee stacking line, one of the largest snack foods manufacturers in the world has chosen a KUKA robotic palletiser, from Linkx Systems. Key factors that influenced their decision were the machine's robust yet streamlined design and flexibility in handling two sizes of pallets.

9th January 2015

Quality control with LRS 36 light section sensors at dairy

The Gropper dairy is well known for its fresh ideas made of milk - after all, the ambitious employees at the innovative dairy in Kesseltal (Bavaria, Germany) love everything to do with milk. Jürgen Kreutz from the Electrical Maintenance department at Gropper had been looking for a "fresh" idea of a different sort for the so-called full-crate check at the end of the cup production line. His idea of solving this task using LRS 36 light section sensors from Leuze electronic reduces the number of sensors, simplifies the application, saves manual conversion required due to the frequent format changes and makes this particular step in the quality assurance procedure more reliable.

18th December 2014

Servo tube linear motors tick all the right boxes for Graze

If you are into healthy and nutritious snacks, have bought anything from Amazon recently, or are a follower of the Sunday Times "Fast Track Top 100 companies", then you will have heard of Graze. The west London-based business, started by seven friends, delivers boxes of four perfectly sized nutritious snacks across the UK by post. However, what's unusual about Graze is that it customises each customer's boxes based on their ratings and preferences and optimises the freshness of each ingredient used. Graze is much more about than just food though; it's also about how they have applied cutting-edge technology to meet the significant challenges of their complex production methods.

11th December 2014

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