Increasing your packaging efficiency: From manual labor to automating packaging for shop display
By Bo Wallteg, Nord Emballage
At the far end of Tjörn is Klädesholmen, an idyllic place by the sea in Bohuslän, with narrow streets and close-knit houses. On the outskirts of the community there is also Klädesholmen Seafood, a food producer of mainly herring in many forms, as well as kaviar and fish paté.
Matjessill has put Klädesholmen on the map
Matjessill has long been a specialty for us and today we have a significant part of the Swedish market,” says Pettersson. “In 2015, we moved into newly built premises and today produce our products in one of the Nordic region’s most modern food factories.”
In the factory, the herring is processed with various enhancements and sauces and then packed in jars and buckets. Caviar and fish pate are packed in aluminum tubes.
Glass is the major packaging material for the herring, but the plastic packaging is also very important. Traditionally, there has been a lot of manual labor in packing herring, right up into the 90s. Often, it was women who cleaned the fish and packed it in jars, which was tiring work. Today, most things are automated, but at Klädesholmen Seafood, some products are still manufactured in the traditional way. In addition to glass and plastic lines, Klädesholmen Seafood also has a line for commercial kitchens and a line for aluminum tubes.
New line investment for the future
The filling of the tubes, which have volumes from sixty grams to three hundred grams, is done via a tube filler from Norden Machinery, while the packing of them in corrugated boxes has formerly been a manual task.
“The packing was monotonous and tiring work, so we decided to invest in automating the process with the help of a robot tube packer from Norden Machinery,” explains Pettersson.
In connection with this, they also invested in a new tube filler.
“For us, Norden Machinery is the preferred choice when it comes to tube filling and packing. The new line has been in operation just over six months and our equipment works perfectly, with only minor adjustments having to be made, which is always the case with a new installation. It has been a smooth start-up process,” says Pettersson.