Gentle handling is a priority for bakery manufacturers to maintain the quality of their products and with its range of comprehensive solutions, Syntegon can offer the right machine for you
Baked goods have a long journey ahead of them before they arrive safely packaged on supermarket shelves – and it is the manufacturer’s job to ensure that they arrive there safe and sound. However, there is no one-size fits all solution on how to get them to their destination. That is why it is also in their hands to find a combination of machinery equipment – conveyor systems, pick-and-place solutions, infeed modules and endload equipment – that will transport the delicate products fresh out of the oven and into their primary and secondary packaging. By relying on solutions that prioritise gentle handling, manufacturers can achieve this goal.
Consumers love their cakes’ soft and fluffy texture. For food producers it is exactly those crumbly textures that pose various challenges: as soon as baked goods leave the oven, they are exposed to mechanical stress that may cause them to break or crumble. Bumping together or against safety guarding could affect their overall structure, decreasing production efficiency and wasting precious resources. This is why many food producers make the gentle handling of their baked products a priority throughout their packaging line.
Minimising mechanical stress during distribution and infeed handling
The first stop for baked goods after baking and cooling is a discharge station, which distributes products onto various packaging legs. One solution that ensures particularly gentle handling is packaging technology manufacturer Syntegon’s discharge system Distribution Continuous Gentle (DCG). The efficient modular solution consists of one or more stations that can be arranged one behind the other. Using the pullnose method, the DCG discharge belt lowers and deposits the cakes gently and in a controlled manner onto the downstream cross belt. The fragile baked goods are neither dropped nor pushed. This method minimises mechanical stress and avoids product loss.
Once the sliced cakes have been discharged onto the packaging leg, manufacturers need to choose an infeed module that avoids product build-up on the line and continuously feeds them to a flow wrapping machine. Infeed solutions with linear technology, such as Syntegon’s FIT module, have proven they can ensure gentle handling. Thanks to their innovative technology, each mover of the infeed belt can be controlled individually and accelerates when a mover has safely captured a product to prevent the cakes from coming into contact with each other before they are wrapped into their protective films.
Packaged gently with robotic assistance
As part of the downstream packaging process after the flow wrapper, many manufacturers rely on solutions like Syntegon’s robotic pick-and-place RPP to take care of grouping and loading the sensitive products into their secondary packaging. Often aided by camera systems, the robots automatically inspect the incoming cakes, discharge defectively packaged ones and group the rest of the products for endloading into secondary packaging. Specially designed End-of-Arm-tools ensure that this process happens gently with minimal mechanical stress…
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Media contact
Caitlin Gittins
Editor, International Bakery
Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 920
Email: editor@in-bakery.com
