VERPACKEN-AKTUELL

A healthy batch of safety

Case study: beumer stretch hood to protect organic products

28. September 2018

Davert GmbH is a German manufacturer and distributor of high-quality organic products. With 150 employees, the company is based in Ascheberg, in the Münsterland region.

Quelle: Beumer Group

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Davert GmbH is a German manufacturer and distributor of high-quality organic products. With 150 employees, the company is based in Ascheberg, in the Münsterland region.

Quelle: Beumer Group

Dav­ert GmbH spe­cialis­es in or­gan­ic foods and stands for the con­tin­u­ous fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of pro­cess­ing meth­ods and care­ful mon­i­tor­ing of these prod­ucts, from cul­ti­va­tion to pack­ag­ing. And this is where BEUMER Group comes in. The fin­ished, high qual­i­ty or­gan­ic prod­ucts like rice, legumes and ce­re­al prod­ucts like sug­ar, dried fruit, nuts, oilseeds and sprout­ing seeds must be pro­tect­ed from dust and pests dur­ing stor­age and then trans­port­ed with­out dam­age to drug and health food stores. The sys­tem sup­pli­er pro­vid­ed the BEUMER stretch hood A for this task. It cov­ers the mixed pal­lets of bags, car­tons and buck­ets with a high­ly elas­tic stretch film, pro­tect­ing them against ex­ter­nal in­flu­ences, keep­ing the mer­chan­dise se­cured dur­ing trans­port, even through sud­den brak­ing.

Healthy and sus­tain­able nu­tri­tion plays an in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant role to con­sumers. Not only be­cause it tastes bet­ter and is good for you, but also be­cause con­sumers are tak­ing a more crit­i­cal look and want trans­paren­cy when it comes to the pro­duc­tion and pro­cess­ing of their food. Or­gan­ic su­per­mar­kets and health food stores re­spond to these de­mands. Dav­ert GmbH is a trad­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny for high-quality or­gan­ic prod­ucts. The com­pa­ny with its 150 em­ploy­ees is based in As­cheberg, in the south­ern Mün­ster re­gion, right next to the epony­mous na­ture re­serve Dav­ert. "With our guar­an­tee of ori­gin, we are com­mit­ted to fair trade and long-term busi­ness re­la­tion­ships world-wide," says Er­win Ten­brink, Tech­ni­cal Di­rec­tor at Dav­ert. The com­pa­ny acts as a con­sul­tant for its part­ners when it comes to prod­uct se­lec­tion and cul­ti­va­tion and co­or­di­nates in­fra­struc­ture projects. For its cus­tomers, Dav­ert fol­lows a mul­ti-channel strat­e­gy: the mer­chan­dise is sold via their own on­line shop and in in se­lect­ed drug­stores and health food re­tail­ers.

Cleanliness has the highest priority

Davert opts for the BEUMER stretch hood A packaging system to protect the organic products against dust and pests.

Quelle: Beumer Group

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Davert opts for the BEUMER stretch hood A packaging system to protect the organic products against dust and pests.

Quelle: Beumer Group

"We are en­sur­ing the high­est de­gree of clean­li­ness to meet our strict qual­i­ty stan­dards," ex­plains Ten­brink. Be­fore be­ing shipped out, the legumes, rice etc. have un­der­gone spe­cial qual­i­ty con­trols. The em­ploy­ees ex­am­ine the in­com­ing raw prod­ucts and set up the re­quired clean­ing steps. In one mill for ex­am­ple, air flow from the as­pi­ra­tion chan­nel re­moves stalk rem­nants, husks and dust from the ce­re­al. Dif­fer­ent sized grains are seper­at­ed us­ing screens. Weed seeds and light par­ti­cles like de­fec­tive grains are also weed­ed out by the sys­tem, an op­to­elec­tron­ic sorter re­moves the for­eign par­ti­cles. "An­oth­er pre­ven­tive mea­sure is the pres­sure treat­ment that we use to pre­vent any pest in­fes­ta­tion from the start," re­ports Ten­brink. "The sud­den pres­sure re­lease kills off any pests like bugs, moths or mites and their lar­vae and eggs, with­out com­pro­mis­ing the qual­i­ty of the prod­uct in any way."

In com­pli­ance with the qual­i­ty as­sur­ance process, em­ploy­ees pack the mer­chan­dise in a va­ri­ety of ways, de­pend­ing on the prod­uct: rice, flour, lin­seed and grains are packed into bags, larg­er stor­age quan­ti­ties into big bags. Pack­aged legumes, nuts, dried fruit and mues­li is filled into box­es, hon­ey into buck­ets. De­pend­ing on the store or­der, the team stacks the var­i­ous unit loads onto mixed pal­lets. "Up to this point in the process, we as­sign the high­est pri­or­i­ty to clean­li­ness," ex­plains Ten­brink: "And now it is just as im­por­tant to keep this lev­el of clean­li­ness and pro­tect the prod­ucts from dust and pests dur­ing stor­age in our high-rack ware­house." The units also have to be loaded safe­ly onto the back of the trucks and reach the dis­trib­u­tor with­out any dam­age. This is where the pack­ag­ing comes into play.

Reliable and powerful packaging system

The pallets are packaged in short cycle times. The machine covers the products with a highly elastic stretch hood.

Quelle: Beumer Group

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The pallets are packaged in short cycle times. The machine covers the products with a highly elastic stretch hood.

Quelle: Beumer Group

The man­agers were look­ing for a so­lu­tion that could meet all these re­quire­ments, en­sur­ing fast and re­li­able op­er­a­tion, high lev­els of avail­abil­i­ty, easy main­te­nance, and a small foot­print. They found BEUMER Group. The sin­gle-source provider for fill­ing, pal­letis­ing and pack­ag­ing tech­nol­o­gy de­liv­ered the BEUMER stretch hood A high-capacity pack­ag­ing sys­tem. "The ma­chine is very easy and safe to op­er­ate," de­scribes Volk­er Feld­mey­er, sales en­gi­neer at BEUMER Group and re­spon­si­ble for the project at Dav­ert. "In or­der to make work eas­i­er for the main­te­nance per­son­nel, which also means high­er lev­els of avail­abil­i­ty, the ma­chine does not re­quire any plat­form." Main­te­nance work, such as chang­ing the blades or the seal­ing bars, is han­dled at floor lev­el. The op­er­a­tor sim­ply opens a draw­er, pro­vid­ing free ac­cess. Ad­di­tion­al ben­e­fits in­clude the com­pact de­sign and the re­sult­ing low height and small foot­print.

A film trans­port sys­tem, which is par­tic­u­lar­ly gen­tle on the ma­te­r­i­al, in­tro­duces the pre­vi­ous­ly cut and sealed film hood into the sys­tem. On its way to the crimp­ing and stretch­ing unit, the seal­ing seam on the film hood cools down so that it can be crimped with­out los­ing time. En­er­gy-consuming cool­ing units and de­layed cool­ing times be­come ob­so­lete. This means that the pal­lets can be packed in a short­er cy­cle time. Eco­nom­i­cal en­gines and a low­er de­mand in com­pressed air op­ti­mise the en­er­gy bal­ance. En­vi­ron­men­tal con­sid­er­a­tions are also im­por­tant to Dav­ert. In or­der to save re­sources and pro­duce min­i­mum waste, the com­pa­ny opt­ed for this type of film wrap­ping. The pal­letised goods are also clear­ly vis­i­ble through the smooth sur­face of the trans­par­ent, high­ly flex­i­ble film. The wrap­ping pro­tects the mer­chan­dise against at­mos­pher­ic in­flu­ences and hu­mid­i­ty, and en­sures an aes­thet­ic ap­pear­ance on the shop floors. "The elas­tic film also in­creas­es the safe­ty dur­ing trans­port con­sid­er­ably," de­scribes Feld­mey­er. At Dav­ert, the BEUMER stretch hood A pack­ages the pal­lets for high-bay stor­age sys­tems: the pal­let base re­mains un­wrapped, so that the forks of the fork-lift truck won't dam­age the film. This pre­vents any re­main­ing film from in­ter­fer­ing dur­ing the con­tour check be­fore the pal­let is stored in the high-rack sys­tem.

Easily operated

The merchandise remains clearly visible through the smooth film surface. It protects against atmospheric influences and humidity, and ensures an aesthetic appearance on the shop floors.

Quelle: Beumer Group

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The merchandise remains clearly visible through the smooth film surface. It protects against atmospheric influences and humidity, and ensures an aesthetic appearance on the shop floors.

Quelle: Beumer Group

The sys­tem sup­pli­er has in­tro­duced the BEUMER Group Hu­man Ma­chine In­ter­face (HMI). This new­ly-developed op­er­a­tor pan­el with an op­ti­mised user in­ter­face and graph­i­cal nav­i­ga­tion for op­er­at­ing the sys­tem of­fers an even more er­gonom­ic work­flow to the user. This eas­i­ly un­der­stand­able and in­tu­itive in­ter­ac­tion con­cept helps to de­fine ef­fi­cient work­ing se­quences. "The soft-touch pan­el uses pic­tograms to guide the user through the menu of the Siemens SIMAT­IC S7 ma­chine con­trol," ex­plains Feld­mey­er. ""The pan­el also gives the op­er­a­tor ac­cess to all re­quired train­ing pro­grams and con­tent."

"We im­ple­ment­ed this project in close co­op­er­a­tion with BEUMER Group," Er­win Ten­brink is hap­py to re­port. He is en­tire­ly con­vinced of the great tech­ni­cal co­op­er­a­tion dur­ing the plan­ning and in­stal­la­tion of the sys­tem. One im­por­tant as­pect for him is re­li­able cus­tomer sup­port, as even this high-quality ma­chine needs main­te­nance and ser­vice. "If nec­es­sary, we send our ser­vice per­son­nel to the plant to check the sys­tem and per­form any re­quired ad­just­ments," Feld­mey­er promis­es. "This way we can en­sure high-levels of avail­abil­i­ty at any time."

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