Aunt Bessie's Production Facility Upgrade, United Kingdom

Aunt Bessie's is a UK brand offering products based on traditionally British recipes, owned by food manufacturer Tryton Foods. Aunt Bessie's flagship product is a ready-made frozen Yorkshire pudding, with 20 million produced every week.

Tryton owns three plants in Hull in the north of England and employes 550 personnel. Tryton is aiming to develop Aunt Bessie's earnings of £130m into a £250m retail brand by 2010 without opening new factories, although they are prepared to invest in new technology.

ISHIDA PACKAGING

In March 2007, Tryton Foods (owned by William Jackson and Sons) wanted to make their Yorkshire pudding brand even more convenient for the consumer while making the packaging and weighing of the product easier.

Tryton contracted packaging producer Ishida Europe to design and install a bespoke weighing and packing solution to fully automate the packing process of the Yorkshire puddings. Tryton Foods had previously worked with Ishida on other packaging projects with positive results.

Projects general manager Tim Stafford said: "Naturally we also looked at the competition, but with Ishida we already knew the high levels of expertise and knowledge that the company could offer."

PACKAGING SOLUTION

The main part of each of the packaging lines is an Ishida multi-head weigher.

The multi-head weigher uses count priority software to weigh each Yorkshire pudding produced and outputted to the conveyor. The system 'counts' by weight the required number of puddings into the standard bags of 12, 15 and 25 puddings.

Operating in 'twin' mode, it can weigh and pack products into two packs simultaneously.

The weighers are equipped with an enhanced auto feed function enabling the product feed to each of the hoppers to be adjusted automatically during the packaging operation, providing a uniform supply of product to each pool and weigh hopper.

Ishida also supplied feed conveyors, vibratory conveyors, crosshead feeders and gantry supports for the weighers.

CHANGE OVER

The effectiveness of the new packaging system has enabled Tryton Foods to change the packaging of its Yorkshire puddings from its familiar flow-wrapped trays to the more convenient bags.

In order to minimise downtime, Ishida-designed washing facilities were installed at the top of the gantry near the weighers. This allows faster cleaning of the machines between production runs and hence more efficient production. Different programmes and pack sizes are stored in the weigher's memory for fast changeovers at the touch of a button on the colour touch screen RCU (remote control unit).

ISHIDA SYSTEM

One of the problems with processing Yorkshire puddings is that they are quite bulky but also lightweight. The Ishida design stipulated five litre hoppers for the weighers so that the product would move along faster during the weighing process. In addition to Yorkshire puddings, Tryton Foods will also use the same Ishida weighers for other brands such as mini Yorkshire puddings, dumplings and stuffing balls.