Flexicon makes the cut: Contract packer adds Flexicon conveyor reducing blending cycle time by 66%

摘要

Contract packer of dry lawn and garden products and specialty animal feeds, RitePak, has recently introduced a Flexicon flexible screw conveyor to its process blending line enabling the company to reduce significantly a typical cycle time for a 453kg batch from 45 minutes to just 15 minutes. According to Fred Schneider, RitePak's vice president: "It paid for itself in the first year through increased production". RitePak formulates, blends and packages around 50 different products for various clients, with an average of four or five ingredients per mix. The company receives the majority of its ingredients in 22.5kg bags, and before the upgraded processing line each ingredient was weighed manually before being added to a batch, persons formulating the batch adding ingredients directly to a single ribbon blender. This manual formulation added significantly to the overall cycle time. Although cumbersome and time-consuming the manual process worked reasonably well for low-volume packing applications, however when production levels rose to around 227,000kg per week it was totally inadequate. The problem was not the blender itself, but the product in-feed process.