Airline Meals Packaging Automated

Airline Meals Business Increases Production with Automatic Cartoner

Geographical Location: UK

Industry/Product Lines: Food packaging, Frozen food packaging

Client Requirements:

Jacob White had previously worked with a major business supplying savoury products for an airline meals provider and were delighted to welcome them back for another cartoning machine. This time looking to increase production and reduce costs for packaging cartons needing to be frozen and reheated for airline passengers, the company needed:

• An automatic operation
• Minimum intervention to meet food hygiene standards
• Increase speed of packaging and subsequent production
• Reduced reliance on manual resources
• Reliable sealing process to cope with freezing and reheating

Our Solution

The Jacob White team already had a good knowledge of the client, having worked closely with them on previous occasions. We met with them to discuss the latest challenges they were facing and were confident in offering them the NS-X 5 automatic packaging machine without hesitation to meet their needs.

These machines reduce the manual resources needed for operations significantly, yet still give full operator visibility and control, crucial for a food packaging environment. The fully automatic cartoning machine erects the cartons, detects, picks and loads the products before conveying them via moving flighted chains through the sealing process where hot and cold glue is used to securely seal the cartons. Powered belts discharge the products from the machine.

The operator can have the option for manual product loading too, and size variations can be quickly and easily dealt with, offering full flexibility for the entire product range.

The End Result

The customer went with the recommended machine, and we installed the NS-X 5 with no issues. The machine offered them exactly what they needed in an automated packaging solution with minimum human intervention and stainless-steel construction to tick the hygiene standards boxes firmly.

Having both hot and cold glue sealing meant that the product was fully suitable for the freezing and reheating process.

Because of the varying size options, and the PLC control allowing HMI to change programs with the machine still running, the business has been able to operate short production runs of a variety of products. They are exploring further opportunities now they have been able to reduce the labour reliance and increase productivity.

From the Customer

“The NS-X 5 has helped double our production so far. We’re relying less on manual labour and the consistency and quality has improved far beyond our expectations. Working for the airline industry, we have faced challenges with packaging because of the freezing, chilling and reheating process. Making sure the passengers have good food is one thing – getting it to them in the best condition is another. Thanks to the NS-X 5 we’re noticing an immediate improvement.

We came to Jacob White because we’ve been so happy in the past and we were delighted to see that nothing had changed in that respect. The quality of the training is high and the after sales care in terms of parts and servicing is reliable and reassuring.”