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Passionate about vegetables: Bonduelle Deutschland GmbH is a subsidiary of the French Bonduelle Group and is the European market leader in processed vegetables.
At its site in the German town of Straelen on the Lower Rhine, ready-to-eat salads are prepared for the emerging market for convenience foods. Each day up to 100,000 lettuces are processed at the Straelen site. Once the lettuce has been meticulously rinsed, shredded and freshly packaged, it takes just 24 hours for it to find its way onto the market, into hotels, restaurants and commercial kitchens throughout Germany and Holland. In all steps of the production process is quality and product reliability of paramount importance to Bonduelle.
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Dynamic weighing and simultaneous metal detection – with the XS3 CC H CombiChecker
On line 2, an XS3 CC H checkweigher from METTLER TOLEDO Garvens inspects the so-called garden mix, a mixed salad with endive, radicchio and frisee lettuce. The net weight of the various mixed salads can vary between 75 and 1,000 grammes. The checkweigher determines the product weight of each packet of salad up to an accuracy of one gramme with a throughput of up to 90 pouches per minute.
The Garvens XS3 CC H CombiChecker combines a very accurate checkweigher with a very sensitive metal detector. Over or underweight salad packs are also ejected from the production line, as are packs with even the minutest levels of iron contaminants with a diameter of > 1.2 mm, of non-ferrous metals with a diameter of > 1.7 mm or stainless steel with a diameter of > 2.3 mm.
This state-of-the-art Combichecker has been specially designed for manufacturers in the food industry and fulfils quality criteria in accordance with FDA, BRC and IFS. Centralised inventory management along with the 100% reporting procedures are performed via an Ethernet connection to the Bonduelle IT central database. Another impressive feature is the so-called "H frame" design with just four feet, allowing for convenient cleaning. Modern checkweighers are extremely easy to operate. "We opted for the Garvens XS3 CC H, as this checkweigher offers far more advantages than competing models", explains Julien Volpoet, the technical manager at the Straelen site. "What particularly impressed us about this modern checkweigher is the fact that it is particularly easy to operate, as both the checkweigher and the metal detector are controlled via the same terminal. What's more, thanks to the individual user management system, an individual profile can be assigned to each operator. This is perfect for us, as we have several different employees working with this checkweigher", continues Mr.Volpoet.
