Company
Infant food manufacturer.
Challenge
To handle the output from two existing vertical-form-fill-seal (VFFS) bag packers into a single cartoner – and co-ordinate the additional infeed of unwrapped spoons from bulk.
Each box to contain a single bag of infant cereal and spoon.
Solution
This bag-in-box application required careful management and a fully integrated system to maximise operational efficiency.
The two, independently-running vertical bagger machines were combined with a high-speed, three-level bomb bay infeed – (also known as a split tray sorter or flat sorter) – to load the cereal bags into our MAESTRO hygienic continuous cartoner.
The system incorporated a bulk hopper with bowl feeder to orient the unwrapped spoon into a single conveyor, which then synchronised electronically with the cartoner pitch and used a servo-driven rotary wheel to deliver the spoon to each box.
This streamlined approach also featured a purpose-designed cartoner bucket to transport the bags and spoons for loading, plus an overhead compression unit to further improve packing speeds.
