Complete traceability for fresh-cut vegetables

Salad producer boosts capacity and efficiency with an eye to increased safety

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Prepared salads are produced at up to 40 trays per minute, whilst automating inspection and making every pack traceable to a stored X-ray image PRODUCING 30 tonnes of fresh products every day, ranging from vegetables and salads to fruit, including ready to use salad mixes under the Betty Bossi and Weight Watchers brands, it's no wonder that Gastro Star AG was an early adopter of automation in salad packing. Its latest complete packing line - enabling three to four operators to produce prepared salads at up to 40 trays per minute, whilst automating inspection and making every pack traceable to a stored X-ray image - is part of a wider series of measures that the Swiss company has taken to increase capacity and efficiency in the face of steady demand for its products. The complete line produces 200g and 250g packs and includes tray denesting, multihead weighing, tray sealing, labelling, seal testing, vision system, x-ray inspection, checkweighing and packing into crates. Ishida's Solutions Division, who installed it in November 2009 in conjunction with Itech, Ishida's distributor in Italy and Switzerland, designed the system. The line is designed to enable crates of prepared leaves, which have been cut to size and washed, to be run via an elevator above the multihead weigher, where the salad is tipped into an infeed system. The tray sealer at the heart of the line is a state-of-the-art Ishida QX-1100. It handles four trays at a time, flushing them with an atmosphere of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide, and delivering a neat, economical seal with no protruding edges. Previously labour intensive elements to the weighing and packing of products have been eliminated. Stainless steel contact surfaces and sophisticated vibratory system of the 10-head Ishida RS-series weigher reduce the possibility of clumping or sticking of leaves, and the need to manually rectify potential product-in-seal problems is largely eliminated by a distribution system that delivers the leaves to the tray in a neat and discrete batch via a feeder tube and dipping funnel, that gently tamps them to below the tray edge. At the end of the line, the IPS (Ishida Packing System) pick-and-place system not only automates what used to be the most labour-intensive part of the line, but also does it at high speed and with far greater flexibility by picking individual packs rather than pre-determined lots or layers. The addition of a plastic cup containing product-specific additions, such as salad dressing, cheese or croutons, accounts for much of the small amount of labour involved. The weigher is mounted on wheels, for easy movement around the floor, and both weigher and infeed system can be effortlessly raised and lowered for full cleaning access. Together with the general Ishida policy of designing contact parts to be removable and replaceable without tools, this means that hygiene standards can be improved whilst man-hours spent cleaning are reduced. The Ishida Seal Tester integrated into the line can detect a 0.75mm hole or gap in the seal at high speed. Mounted on it, and capable of using its rejection system, is an Ishida Vision System which verifies that each label is appropriate and positioned correctly, as well as relating the overprinted data to the company's information systems in order to check that dates, weights, prices and barcodes are correct, providing extra protection for the end-customer as well as for retailers and brand reputations. Monitoring every pack of salad Gastro Star decided to incorporate an X-ray inspection system into the line to ensure complete traceability for every pack of packaged salad. The chosen X-ray inspection system is an Ishida IX-GA 2475, which can not only detect unwanted metal, plastic, glass, stAdidas Yeezy