Yield control for salads and fresh fruits producers

UK-based salads producer Flavour Fresh, has recently taken delivery of an additional 11 station Marco YCM (Yield Control Module) system.

The company focuses on the growing, packaging and distribution of fresh produce for supermarkets and retail outlets. The original eight station Marco installation, dedicated to the packing of tomatoes, has already brought impressive improvements in efficiency and productivity for the company.

The manual packing of fresh produce such as tomatoes requires a blend of operator speed, dexterity and care to ensure produce reaches the consumer in tip top condition. However, variations in individual fruit size and weight can make it difficult to meet target pack weights, whilst also minimising giveaway. As a result, using standard scale systems, it is not unusual for packs to come off the line with double digit percentage overweight.

Flavour fresh’s Operations Manager Brendan Gillow is full of praise for the Marco System: “The first eight station installation has brought excellent results and in a shorter time period than we expected. It was a natural business decision to expand our line capabilities with these further 11 stations.”

Natures Way Foods in West Sussex is also reaping the rewards from Marco’s YCM, installed to streamline the high speed manual packaging of their fresh and prepared fruit range. The company is a pioneering supplier of high quality pre-packaged prepared fruit and salads to major supermarkets, restaurant chains and food service outlets.

The size and weight of individual fruit components, which include apple, pineapple, mango and orange, can vary considerably in each pack. Initial consultative site trials carried out by Marco showed that operators on the prepared fruit packing lines were consistently over-packing by 4-6%, which clearly has a direct negative impact on bottom line profitability.

“We recognised our levels of pack giveaway were unacceptable, but prior to talking with Marco we couldn’t find a company who could guarantee a sustainable yield control solution. Marco listened to our concerns and within hours of their system going live, giveaway had been reduced to below 0.1 g/pack. The significant reduction in giveaway continues to be maintained without affecting the ingredient balance and savings go directly to our bottom line. In parallel, our productivity has increased and we now have full traceability from the packing line. The operators find the system very easy to use and the wireless mobility of the LineMaster stations allows us to change line layout with minimum disruption. All this is good news for us and good news for our customers and consumers,” explained the Head of Operations at Natures Way Foods.

Marco claims its YCM-Gen2 both reduces fresh produce giveaway and cuts pack-house labour overheads. YCM-Gen2 removes the need to manually check/adjust the weight of each pack. All pre-packed product at the start of the line pass over a dedicated check-weigher. Packs within pre-set target weight tolerances continue onto the final check-weigher, whilst packs outside these tolerances are automatically diverted to a series of in-line conveyors where they are adjusted to fall within tolerance, without ever leaving the packing line. YCM-Gen2 is constantly updated with dynamic weight data from the two check-weighers and Marco’s automatic optimisation software continually adjusts pre- and post-tolerances to ensure full compliance with the packers’ rules and to ensure that over-pack is minimised.