The Story
The Dutch producer of wholesale seeds, Bejo Zaden B.V. wanted to increase the quality of its packaging line without significant capital investment. It also understood that automation was the ideal solution to ensuring that its global customer base of professional cultivators would receive the correct product and product count in an attractive package. In October of 2006 a BREEZE™ horizontal cartoner, a Langen intermittent motion machine, was installed at its facility located near Alkmaar in the northern part of The Netherlands.
The product itself is a sachet of seeds varying in size depending on the product: carrots, cauliflower, cucumbers, etc. This difference in sachet size must be accounted for during the collation stage prior to carton loading. A Bombay Tower infeed is electronically synchronised with the existing sachet machine and counts the appropriate number of sachets, at 60 per minute, to form collations of five to ten per carton. A reject mechanism is integrated in case the sachets are incorrectly spaced on the infeed conveyor to prevent a double or missed count. The advantage of electronically coupling the cartoning system with the sachet machine improves the quality control of the carton contents by positively identifying each sachet type along the entire infeed path. This could not be fully guaranteed in the previous manual system and ultimately Bejo customers will benefit.
Bejo ships its product to a large number of countries presenting a packaging challenge as different languages must be printed. The most economical solution is to use a single type of carton bearing the Bejo brand with a die-cut window. The product information is printed in different languages on the sachets themselves which is readily viewed through the window. A single-head rotary feeder squarely places each carton between the chain lugs where they are carried down the product path. Carrying the carton has the advantage of protecting the company's graphics; other methods such as pushing the carton down the product path may damage graphics as well as the company brand. |
