C31 StandardLine Checkweigher
Affordable checkweigher ideally suited to replace spot checks with 100% inline weight control. The easy to use system offers reliable performance for food and non-food applications in dry and wet environments.
Dutch company Lamb Weston/Meijer V.O.F is one of the largest frozen potato product manufacturers in the world. Fifteen tonnes of potatoes per hour are processed in the Oosterbierum- based company, which supplies its products to the world's biggest quick-service restaurants and food services in 80 countries throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The company has been working together with METTLER TOLEDO Product Inspection for 25 years to fulfil the criteria of globally approved quality and food safety standards, recognised by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI).
Recently, Lamb Weston updated their production lines with five new METTLER TOLEDO Checkweighers. Sjerk Zoodsma, Technical Director explains that the current production line's upgrade was successfully installed by METTLER TOLEDO: "We are very satisfied with the retrofitting of our production lines. The new checkweighers are aligned with our production speed ensuring higher throughput and maximum uptime."
More than one hundred employees in Oosterbierum ensure that potatoes are processed into high-quality prefried frozen French fries and other potato specialties. French fries have their very own quality specifications, which relate to not only their taste but also their physical appearance. Complex camera technology inspects every single french fry for natural defects, while their color is continuously checked by eye in a laboratory. At the same time, all by-products such as potato skins and bits of potato find a new useful destination – as animal feed, for example.
The high-tech nature of the manufacturing process makes the company's production environment very complex. The design of the five checkweighing solutions has been perfectly adapted to this environment. Due to the small amount of space available, Lamb Weston needed a checkweighing solution that was space-saving and, at the same time, adapted to the height dimensions of upstream and downstream machines. In another effort to accommodate space requirements, the conveyor control system has been positioned externally with a separate control cabinet including the weighing terminal.