Jozsef Weigert
Leading Hungarian bakery Csipet Land has installed an Ishida weighing, packing and quality control line to achieve an annual production increase of 4-5 million packs of salted sticks for one of the country’s best-selling snacks.
Founded in 1992, Csipet Land manufactures pretzels and salted sticks, both as private label for leading supermarkets and under its own brand. In 2014, the company was bought by entrepreneur László Konkoly, who began a process of modernisation that now sees Csipet Land produce more than 1,800 tonnes of baked snacks every year.
“Partly, this is about broadening our product portfolio, as we have introduced low-salt and organic varieties and are planning a gluten-free range. But it is also about investment in new machinery to improve efficiency and allow us to meet consumer demand,” he says.
One clear area, in which Csipet Land could make a difference, was in the delivery of 45g packs of salted sticks. Csipet Land sells 14 million packs per year of this popular and affordable snack format – not bad for a country whose population is only 10 million!
The key challenge for Csipet Land was to achieve a high-speed packaging line, without compromising product quality. “Salted sticks are thin and fragile and will break if not handled with care. Therefore, any investment in automation required delicate handling as well as speed,” explains László Konkoly.
The solution became clear after Konkoly spoke to food machinery specialist Master Quality, Ishida’s agent in Hungary. Master Quality proposed an integrated line comprising a multiheaded weigher, a vertical form, fill and seal (VFFS) bagmaker and a checkweigher / metal detector combi unit, all manufactured by Ishida.
Installed in Spring 2021, the line is capable of weighing, bagging and check weighing 80 packs per minute – a significant increase on what was previously achieved at the factory. Master Quality provided the conveyors, feeders and multiheaded weigher support gantry to complete the line.
Using belt feeders and vibratory feeders, the salted sticks are gently delivered to the top of the Ishida multiheaded weigher. The challenge for Ishida was that the fragile nature of salted sticks makes them particularly difficult to handle with an automated weighing system, especially when high speeds are required.
To tackle this challenge, Ishida recommended its CCW-RV-216W-1S-20-SS-STK1, a specialist solution for weighing fragile stick products at high speeds and with no loss of accuracy or product integrity.
The Ishida stick weigher is designed with multiple features for gentle handling and precise product alignment. A low-profile inlet chute gently delivers the salted sticks to the top of the weigher. The convex dispersion table, utilizing Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technology, ensures maximum product control.
Narrow radial feeder troughs with waterfall ends align the sticks and transfer them gently to the hoppers. Additionally, hopper inserts help maintain the alignment of the sticks, keeping them upright and ready for a clean transfer. The selected weigh hoppers that come closest to the target weight then transfer the salt sticks into a high-speed discharge chute whose geometry maintains product alignment.
To reach the packaging machine, each portion of salted sticks then passes through a triple iris timing hopper arrangement that aligns and settles the salted sticks and finally removes any misaligned sticks before discharge into the Ishida bagmaker.
The Ishida Inspira-NS25 bagmaker features intermittent jaw motion technology for high-performance forming and sealing. Features such as automated film centring, auto-splice film management, automated air-fill technology and other automatic adjustments, help to ensure consistency in production and minimise human error.
Dedicated software- and servo-controlled sealing operation, with accurate jaw temperature and jaw pressure, deliver consistent pack quality and significantly reduce downtime.
The Inspira transfers the packed salted sticks to an Ishida DACS-GN-SE-012-24-SS-M-S checkweigher with integrated CEIA metal detector, which confirms that each pack is within the required weight tolerances whilst checking each pack for metal contamination. The Ishida checkweigher is equipped with Ishida loadcell technology to deliver high weighing accuracy and consistency while Anti-Floor-Vibration (AFV) technology maintains high accuracy in environments susceptible to floor vibration.
Inspected salted stick packs are then manually packed into boxes for distribution.
The full packing line has been customised to suit Csipet Land’s requirements, including the provision of Human-Machine-Interface (HMI) touchscreens in Hungarian language.
“I have been impressed by Master Quality’s commitment to helping us get the best out of the line, even to the extent of changing the specification to achieve even better results,” says László Konkoly.
“These results mean that Csipet Land can now produce an extra 4-5 million 45g packs of salted sticks per year – a testament to the speed and precision of Ishida’s technology and Master Quality’s continuous support.”