published on 29/05/09
Contract engineers were kept busy working for Schubert as they fitted an automated sausage-packing system at Unilever's factory at Oss in the Netherlands.
The system uses a pair of stainless steel TLM-F4 robot arms equipped with suction grippers to pack 160 sausages a minute snugly in to the vacuum-formed packaging.
As companies are currently looking to increase productivity while keeping costs down the machine is in place of the operatives who usually packes the smoked sausgaes by hand, and by outsourcing their engineering team, they were reducing unnecessary overheads again.
The Schubert equipment can process sausages weighing 227-375g and is fitted with a vision system to ensure that damaged or misshapen products are rejected.The maintenance to the machine is carried out by the contarcte ngineers who installed the machine by means of proactive or reactive maintenance, to suit the needs of the customer and the product.

David Maddern, Schubert UK sales director, said the addition of thermoforming made the firm's machines among the most flexible packing systems on the market.

Read the full article at Packagingnews.co.uk