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Pasta plant extraordinaire

The only way for this new pasta producer to meet the needs of three different market segments is to have a packaging operation designed for maximum flexibility.

Farmer members of the wheat growers1 cooperative enjoy seeing their own branded pasta in retail stores in their region. However,
Farmer members of the wheat growers1 cooperative enjoy seeing their own branded pasta in retail stores in their region. However,

Packaging in multiple sizes for multiple markets simultaneously-that was the key objective as Dakota Growers Pasta Co., a startup wheat growers' cooperative, designed its 300ꯠ-sq-ft plant in Carrington, ND. The plant went into production in November, 1993.

The major markets served by the firm are

*foodservice and institutional users,

*retail stores (primarily for private label customers, but DGP also packs under its own brand), and

*processors that use pasta as an ingredient in the packaged foods they market.

Most of the firm's business is in the first two categories, as DGP packs 240 SKUs for its foodservice and institutional customers and 277 SKUs on the retail side. That kind of variety, and the need to be competitive in three very different markets, meant that DGP had to be as flexible as possible in its approach to packaging.

"Some of the big pasta firms have high volumes in one particular product, so they can dedicate a high-output pasta production line to one packaging line," says plant superintendent David Tressler. "But that kind of dedication was never an option for us because we have too many customers with too many packages. We had to be able to go to many different packaging destinations simultaneously, yet we wanted to be able to produce the pasta in large batches. This keeps us keep from having to start and stop, and it minimizes waste.

"With our system I can total up all the orders for, say, spaghetti in a given diameter and produce a batch that will fill all those orders, regardless of what market segment it's for or what style of package it requires. I don't have to think at the processing stage that I have to hit such and such a packaging line, so the amount I produce isn't governed by how much that one packaging line can handle."

DGP can operate this way because of two product conveying systems that serve as the link between processing and packaging. One handles long goods like spaghetti and linguini while the other is for short goods like macaroni and shells. In fact, the area devoted to packaging is split just about down the middle, long goods on one side and short on the other.

The two sides combined are capable of packaging about 2꺜ꯠ lb of pasta per week. Packaging is done 16 hr per day, processing 24, an arrangement that allows about 8 hrs of in-process product accumulation.

Five machines for long goods

On the long goods side, product is directed to any one of five packaging machines by means of the Pasta Elecon® Multi-Axis Conveying System from Gough Econ, Inc. (Charlotte, NC). It uses buckets to carry product to the packaging lines. What makes it unusual is it substitutes a single-chain drive instead of a two-chain approach. Dual-chain drive is fine for linear transport, but it can't negotiate a turn because the chains are of fixed lengths. Traditionally, to send long goods left or right required a transfer point of some kind, and transferring products as fragile as spaghetti invites problems.

Gough's single-chain system permits buckets of pasta to turn to the right or left as easily as they move up or down. DGP is the second firm to employ the system, which Gough designed originally for Hershey.

The Gough system consists of 377 buckets on 1' centers moving steadily in a 100' x 38' overhead loop at 50 ft/min. The buckets only drop down to floor level to get another charge of pasta from one of two automated cutting machines. Every even-numbered bucket gets fed by the first cutter. Odd-numbered buckets are fed by the second cutting machine. Through PLC controls, it's possible to package two different long goods at one time, one produced in each cutter.

Videos from Fallas Automation Inc.
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