In ready-to-eat salads, consumers want inspiring combinations with new and exciting ingredients and packaging is becoming a key factor in their purchase decision. Heat & Control looks at some of the latest solutions from Ishida.
Smart, sustainable packaging is trending, and the right packaging features ensure customers receive the best version of a brand owner’s product and the best impression of the brand. Fast, flexible systems are needed to process high quality, salad-based meals ‘on demand’ and the relatively short shelf life of fresh salad can be a challenge.
Ishida, represented by Heat and Control, has extensive experience in packing salad products and sets the standard for filling into preformed trays. The company says its salad solutions for pre-prepared salads provide “high quality and highest available processing speeds” – for even the most complex ingredient mixes.
Packing salad into trays can be a challenge because the salad leaf has a free-flowing volume or ‘bulk density’ which can be up to three times the volume of the tray. This basically means the leaf will not fit naturally into the confines of the tray, which causes it to spill over easily when it’s packed.
The Ishida Rotary Salad filler is an automatic, high-speed solution, which uses new technology to overcome this problem, and makes packing salad easier, and cost effective.
This innovative equipment automatically fills salad into preformed trays at high speeds with virtually no spillage at the fill point. It can process up to 50 trays per minute, per lane (on all pack formats) and when combined with an Ishida combination weigher; it fills trays cleanly, efficiently and cost effectively.
Preformed trays can be fed by hand, or via an automatic denesting system. The filler fills the tray via the Ishida combination weigher and tamps (settles) the product twice to ensure it is fully in the tray. Trays are then lowered at the exit of the machine to ensure all product remains in the tray. This equipment has been designed for standard market tray sizes from 140gm to 450gm. Trays can be narrow or wide edge leading, and it is suitable for tray sealing, ultrasonic sealing or shrink banding.
