Italian manufacturer PFM has developed a high-speed tray packing line that gives all-round branding and requires minimum change parts. The line was produced to handle cut salad and bulky produce in a wide range of different pack sizes.
“The user required high point-of-sale visibility with all-round branding which, coupled to a need for quick changeover between different weights and sizes, pointed quite decisively to printed film over-wrapping,” said PFM sales and operations director Chris Bolton. “At 100 a minute, the line is also 25% faster than other currently available lines of this type, mostly as a result of the new PFM MBP 16-head C2EW weigher.”
Fed with fresh produce such as lettuce leaves immediately from the washing plant, the weigher has been developed by PFM specifically for leaves and similar bulky produce, with double-opening bucket flaps and a more powerful design of vibratory feeding system.
It sits above a carousel, which indexes to carry the trays below the discharge point and top pressing stations, where the leaves are lightly tamped down into the trays before wrapping. An internal dehumidifier within the weigher counters condensation.
The wrapper is a PFM Mistral equipped with a long-dwell sealing system to provide high integrity, gas-tight seals at elevated speeds.
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