Perfect tandem

FREE from preservatives and artificial flavours, Chobani Greek-style yoghurt is amongst the top brands in the United States. Besides the natural goodness of its product, the company ascribes its success to its close relationship with customers, as well an ambitious manufacturing strategy which involves getting the right partner to supply high-speed product lines. As its business continues to skyrocket, Chobani is investing heavily in production facilities and equipment. In December 2012, it opened a one-million-square-foot plant in Twin Falls, Idaho, said to be the largest yoghurt factory in the world. Besides this, Chobani operates facilities in Norwich (New York), Australia and Canada. These plants are equipped with state-of-the-art, highly reliable and efficient cup filling lines.

Chobani relies on Nova’s efficiency

The company has selected Nova, the cup filling specialist under the Serac Group, to supply it with 12 filling lines, six of which have already been delivered to its plants in Norwich, Twin Falls and Melbourne. The orders were mostly for the linear type which can handle speeds of over 7,500 and up to 40,000 cups per hour. This happens to be Chobani’s maximum requirement for now.

The efficiency of the Nova machines has already been noted by some of Chobani’s project leaders, and it was one of the major factors for choosing the French equipment manufacturer. Another is that Chobani needed line output since it packages large quantities of yoghurt. For its Melbourne plant, the company has requested a linear unit that can process 12.5 tonnes per hour. Needless to say, filling accuracy was a major consideration, and Nova machines came through with a standard deviation of 0.5%. This translates to precision filling, thus avoiding costly overfill and tonnes of waste. Another factor for choosing Nova is its reliability, according to Chobani. Nova lines are said to experience fewer breakdowns, so that the lines are always available.

A seventh line delivered to Melbourne facility

Chobani’s production site in Melbourne installed a high-tech Nova Linea multilayer filling line in February 2013. It is the seventh line for this facility, and will be used for the production of a dessert made of five layers of both fruit and yoghurt. Chobani project leaders had high praises for Nova and Serac for having once again honoured their commitment to quality, efficiency and service, despite being given a tight deadline.

Yet another challenge for Serac

Automating a customer’s recipe is at the heart of Serac’s expertise. However, Chobani came with a new challenge for the equipment manufacturer: filling a cup with five alternate layers of fruit and yoghurt with accurate and neat portions. The new project required specially developed nozzles that would not smear the cups, even at very high speeds. The challenge was to use the same nozzles for fruits with different textures and chunk sizes of up to 10x10x10 mm.

The new nozzles proposed by Nova can process 19 kinds of fruit with the same level of quality. Equally important was the perfect visual effect that Chobani had imagined for its new recipe. For that purpose, the nozzles were placed at 120 degree increments, thus filling the cup in three different directions.

And since fruits are high in sugar – a favourable environment for bacteria to develop – Nova designed its nozzles to ensure stringent hygiene control. It added a valve cleaning system that operates from the rear and requires no dismouMiesten kengät laajasta valikoimasta