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New bagging line brings worker safety, more business

Corn ingredient co-op replaces a manual bagging process with a fully automated line, equipped with a bagger, robotic palletizer, and stretch hooder, to address operator safety issues and lost customers.

A robotic bag palletizer creates perfectly uniform stacks of bags on a pallet, which then receives a stretch hood.
A robotic bag palletizer creates perfectly uniform stacks of bags on a pallet, which then receives a stretch hood.

LifeLine Foods, LLC is a producer-owned cooperative that processes corn into human food ingredients for the likes of Frito Lay, Anheuser-Busch, General Mills, and dozens of other large CPGs. The co-op’s 600-plus farmer/owners hail from Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, and supply LifeLine’s St. Joseph, MO, facility with whole corn for milling into products such as masa flours, dry corn mill product, and extruded flours. Operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with the help of 120 full-time employees, the LifeLine plant manufactures and ships more than a million pounds of food ingredients daily.

A few years ago, when LifeLine experienced a sharp increase in sales, it realized it would have to do something about its manual bagging, sealing, and packaging processes. Says Michelle Clark, Director, Strategic Planning and Analysis, “One year it [sales] increased 97 percent. We were running three different lines with different bag types, sizes, and product types. We knew it wasn’t a sustainable business model.”

One of the biggest issues with manual packaging was the resulting ergonomic effects on operators. For instance, to seal LifeLine’s 25-, 50-, and 55-lb multiwall bags of product, workers had to manually take the bags and run them through the sealer. “If you’re doing 4,000 bags a day, it’s going to be hard on your wrists,” says machine operator Keith Williams.

LifeLine Operations Manager Casey Housman was especially concerned about worker safety: “We needed a new pack line. I said, ‘These things are so old, outdated. We’ve got terrible ergonomic issues. We’ve got to get to it before someone gets hurt or we have a bad quality issue.’”

At the same time, LifeLine’s existing packaging system was costing it sales. Because some of the company’s customers lacked floor space in their own facilities, they required pallets that could be stacked. The lack of automation at LifeLine meant it was producing uneven pallets that could not be stacked. This resulted in LifeLine losing some of the business of those customers requesting easy-to-stack pallets.

According to LifeLine Vice President of Operations and Supply Chain Mike Sobetski, inefficiency and inaccuracy were ultimately the impetus behind updating the company’s packaging process.

In investigating suppliers, Housman says he was looking for a company that not only knew how to build packaging equipment, but also understood the type of products produced by LifeLine and its concerns around dust, sanitation, food safety, and food quality. Due to its expertise in the food industry and its reputation for providing high-quality machinery, Premier Tech Chronos fit the bill.

LifeLine’s new packaging line includes two scale-feeding systems, a high-speed open-mouth bagging machine, a pinch-top bag sealer, a robotic bag palletizer, and a stretch hooder—all from Premier Tech.

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