Faced with a recent increase in demand, Skinners Pet Foods, a producer of dog food, has automated its manual bagging operation using equipment from Pacepacker Services. The subsequent installation of a further two packaging lines, which weigh, bag and seal, has increased throughput to almost 2000 bags of pet food per hour, a 70% increase on manual bagging.
The lines consist of a C21 Multi Pile Sack Placer and a Total Bag Control System (TBC). Two of the lines are designed to handle bags of up to 15kg, running at speeds of 500 bags per hour. In order to meet the demand for smaller bags of pet food, the third line has been designed as a miniature version of the other lines, and handles 2.5kg bags at throughputs of 800 bags per hour. Because the Pacepacker equipment uses modular architecture, the company was able to create a ‘mini’ system.
The Pacepacker system has also overcome inconsistency issues experienced when Skinners introduced a range of pet food in plastic bags.
