Growing volumes
Client
La Fornaia – a manufacturer of bread rolls, cakes, pies and other perishable bakery products. The Solution
Background
Based at Park Royal in West London, the company recently doubled the size of its premises, following five years in which production volume has risen three-fold. As a result of the expansion, they required an additional packaging machine that provides the flexibility to process different product lines.
Solution
With a particularly wide product range to be handled every day of the week, from high volume ciabatta and focaccia, to special short-run flatbreads with a variety of toppings, speed of changeover was a major factor in their choice of packaging machinery.
Paramount Packaging Systems’ Sales Director, Aaron Bessell, recommended a second Fuji Alpha 3410B flow wrapper to complement their existing infrastructure, which would initially be used to handle its handcrafted bread products.
Once the product is selected on the touch screen control panel, the Fuji Alpha 3410B wrapper automatically adjusts itself for the length of the product, the sealing times and temperatures required, whilst also bringing the new printed film into register automatically.
Changeover by the operator takes just 2-3 minutes, as a result of the electronic memory, in which all set-up data is stored.
Scale readings for manual adjustment of the side guides, forming box width and entry angle are shown clearly to the operator on the touch screen controls.
The machine is also equipped with gas flushing equipment to improve product shelf life, as well as box motion jaws, to provide the extra dwell time necessary for secure seals on the high barrier films and laminates, employed by La Fornaia.
Feedback
“We have a product range of over 70 different lines and runs can vary from 15 minutes to 4 hours, processing 500 packs up to 10,000, and so the quick, programmable changeover we achieve with the Fuji machines is a major plus point. Compared to other manufacturers, we find the Fuji machines are quicker to change over and give us the additional flexibility we need.” David Harrison, Production Director.