Poland’s largest manufacturer of rice and corn wafers, crackers, and popcorn snacks has launched Corn A’ Petit waffle snacks, and this has been only possible due to an Ishida packing line solution comprising a multi-head weigher, bag maker, and checkweigher.
Corn A’ Petit waffle snacks are produced from corn kernels and baked with no added fat, preservatives, or gluten and with reduced salt, making them a healthy alternative for snack fans.
As the snacks are 45mm in diameter, compared to traditional wafers, which are 90mm, Good Food Products has been seeking a completely new production line that is able to cope with this specification.
Founded over 30 years ago, Good Food Products has factories in Tarnowo Podgórne and Skórzewo and employs around 400 people. Good Food was the pioneer in the production of rice and corn wafers, as well as one of the first to develop more healthy eating alternatives. With additional investment, the company plans to produce more wafer mini snacks with a variety of raw material bases, including vegetable and protein.
According to Ukasz Wawrzyniak, Engineering Department Manager at Good Food, they conducted extensive market research and found Ishida to be the best fit.
“The quality of the company’s machines speaks for itself.” “We wanted to have the best solution for our new product, which we believe is a game changer in the snack market,” he explained.
The integrated Ishida solution features the company’s 14-head CCW-RVE multi-head weigher combined with its Inspira bag maker. The bagged snacks then have a final weight check on Ishida’s DACS-G checkweigher. The CCW-RVE is well suited for lightweight products such as snacks.
Ishida’s patented Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technology provides greater control of the infeed of the product at the top of the weigher and to the weigh hoppers. Being able to automatically vary the amplitude, time, and frequency of the vibration ensures a steady and consistent flow of product, maintaining speed and efficiency, and reducing the danger of overfilling the hoppers.
The weigher delivers excellent weighing accuracy, thanks to its advanced combination calculation software. After the best combination has been calculated, it is double checked to ensure the discharge is as accurate as possible before the portion is released to the bag maker.
The Ishida Inspira bagmaker features intermittent jaw motion technology for high-performance forming and sealing. Features such as automated film centering, auto-splice film management, automated air-fill technology, and other automatic adjustments help to ensure consistency in production and minimise human error.
Dedicated software- and servo-controlled sealing operations with accurate jaw temperature and jaw pressure deliver consistent pack quality and significantly reduce downtime.
The DACS-G checkweigher incorporates Ishida’s Anti-Floor Vibration (AFV) technology to maximise weighing accuracy in environments susceptible to floor vibration. Special features include Ishida’s Retail Reject Confirmation (RRC) software, which checks and confirms that any out-of-spec product or pack has been successfully removed from the line.
The Ishida installation is operating 24 hours a day, five days a week. Currently, it is handling 60-gram packs of Corn A’Pétit at a rate of 40 bags per minute, well within its overall top speed of 90 bags per minute for this application and giving Good Food Products the ability to readily implement future capacity increases.
Key to the success of the project was ensuring the complete integration of the packing operation with the earlier baking and flavouring stages of production. Corn A’Pétit is currently available in several different varieties, with new flavours continually under development. This means that the Ishida weigher and bagger have to be able to deal effectively with changeovers.
“The weekly number of changeovers depends on how many bags of a particular flavour are planned to be produced, with cleaning being carried out after each changeover, and cleaning and re-assembly taking around 30 minutes,” clarified Wawrzyniak.
Overall, the installed Ishida line enables Good Food operators to better control the weighing and packing process, helping to maintain throughput and high efficiency during production.