Germans love French fries, and their per capita consumption has been rising for years. The potato processor Aviko Deutschland has long been producing at full capacity in order to meet the demand for frozen fries. Replacing the filling systems with more powerful machines is now an important step towards further growth. New multi-head weighers really get things moving and boost output.
Aviko Deutschland GmbH, based in Rain am Lech, is the market leader and full-range supplier of chilled and frozen potato products. The company supplies more than 1,000 wholesalers in Germany and also serves the Swiss and Austrian markets. Aviko Germany is a subsidiary of the Dutch food processor. The company Aviko, headquartered in Steenderen, is one of the world's largest potato processors and relies on the financial strength of its Dutch parent company Royal Cosun, which has an annual turnover of 3.7 billion euros.
Around 40 tonnes of the yellow tubers are processed at Aviko Deutschland every hour, the majority of which are turned into chips, the rest into wedges and fried potatoes. Such huge product quantities require high-performance packaging systems. Eight multihead weighers are available for this purpose in the production area, which are positioned next to each other in an impressive phalanx. The Machines weigh the frozen potato products for packaging in bags with filling weights of 450 to 2,500 grams. This means that the systems are fully utilised and run 24/7.
„In order to increase output, we started in 2023 to increase the to gradually replace existing multihead weighers with new machines“, reports Stefan Leuker, Head of Maintenance. Since then, three of the outdated scales have been replaced by models from the high-performance CCW-RV series from Ishida and further orders have already been placed.
40 per cent more output
The newly installed multihead weighers ensure a significant Increased performance. For example, when filling French fries into 450 gram bags, the manufacturer achieves up to 70 cycles per minute instead of 50 cycles with the previous models.
The potato sticks are fed from above onto the fourteen-head scales of the CCW-RV series and are precisely distributed to the trays by vibrating feed chutes. Five-stage digital filtering of the weighing signal shortens the settling time of the trays so that a maximum number of them are available for the combination calculation. The software determines the three best combinations in a weighing cycle, checks them again and selects the one that comes closest to the target weight. In this way prevents false discharges and ensures the constant speed of the ensured.
The high speed is by no means at the expense of accuracy. According to Stefan Leuker, the overfilling of a 2,500 gram bag is only five grams. This value corresponds roughly to the weight of a single potato stick.
Nothing can shake it
The new multihead weighers are not only fast and accurate, but also very robust. „Unlike our old scales, the new ones Vibrations from the production environment do not lead to failures“, says Leuker. The CCW-RV series features the Anti-Floor Vibration (AFV) system developed by Ishida. To protect the load cells, this technology compensates for the vibrations that affect the scales from the environment. At each of the four corners of the machine body, force sensors measure the external floor vibrations caused by other production machines or employees. Software then filters out the effects of these vibrations when calculating the weight.
Aviko also benefits from quick product changes, which are carried out several times a week by calling up presets. Settings for new products can be easily made using the automatic set-up. Even the fortnightly wet cleaning only causes minimal downtime. All components, including the drive units, have water protection to IP69K, which means that the scales can be Time-saving cleaning with high-pressure and steam jet cleaners become.
Investments for energy efficiency and growth
At full power, the new machines consume around 20 per cent less power than conventional multihead weighers. In addition, the particularly economical operating modes „Half Power“ and „Eco Mode“ can be selected, which reduce consumption by up to 50 per cent. „The machines are proving to be energy savers, which of course benefits us in the corresponding audits,“ reports Stefan Leuker. „And with the new multihead weighers, we can pack significantly more products and fulfil the increasing market demand. We are generally very satisfied with the machines.“ Aviko estimates the amortisation period at two and a half years.
