Mettler Toledo, suppliers of safety and compliance systems for food and beverage processing, has supplied Agra, a Spanish food company forming part of the Unilever Group, with a complete system for both moisture control and weighing at its facility in Leioa, Biscay Province.
The company wanted to effectivelymanage all critical variables in themanufacturing process from one location.So, it called upon Mettler Toledo to come up with a solution for the production of its mayonnaise and margarine.
After clarifying the special needs of theproduction facility, Mettlerinstalled a Windows NT based FreeWeighstatistical control system. This waslinked to 20 inspection stations, comprisingbalances and dryers, used todetermine package weight and moisturecontent. According to both companies this resulted in major benefitsfor Agra in terms of productivity,cost-effectiveness and ergonomics, specific to the facilities unique requirements.The Leioa production plant operateswith filling capacities of 50 to 300 unitsper minute on a variety of automaticand semiautomatic lines.
Agra relies on two types of measuringinstruments from Mettler.For weight control it uses 11 weighingstations and for moisture analysis, 9HR73 halogen dryers. Both systems arecontrolled from an IBM-compatible PC.
Weight control
The Mettler Toledo PR balances atthe work stations and the central unitare interconnected via the MTCom bus.The fill quantity control system whichoffers free configuration of product data,filling machines, batches, other operationalparameters and various reportscomplies with Spanish Standard RD723/88.
Its benefits are said to include the simplicity of packaging inspectionon the production line withdocumentation and graphical evaluationof attributes testing; the possibility of combining theweights of the packages with otherquality attributes (labeling, packagesealing, etc.); compliance to GMP regulations together with automatic calibration.
Moisture content control
New work stations are equipped withMettler's HR73 moistureanalysers which provide: statistical monitoringof moisture content with free configurationof product data, filling machines,batches and other operating parameters,as well as various additional reports.These features are said to make it possible to visualise datasuch as mean values, standard deviationsand their corresponding graphicsfor each individual line. Reports areprinted out both manually and automatically and include hourly, shift,daily and batch reports as well as randomsample and other reports.
On site
According to Mettler there are a number of benefits to the HR73moisture analyzing system. These include the evaporation of water in aproduct effected by means of ahalogen lamp, which is programmedand continuously controlled. This isa considerable improvement on aninadequately controlled source ofheat, especially if the properties ofthe initial product are changed, the company says. Furthermore this quicker method is said to better comply with ISO quality requirements.
For further information about this and any other Mettler Toledo solutions, please email Urs Berli.