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Bulk-packed Craisins pick up the pace

As demand for its sweetened dried cranberries in 10- and 25-lb boxes continued to increase, Ocean Spray responded with a brand new bag-in-box line.

A 10-bucket combination scale feeds a steady supply of sweetened dried cranberries to each waiting case (inset).
A 10-bucket combination scale feeds a steady supply of sweetened dried cranberries to each waiting case (inset).

Cereal marketers, muffin makers and other large food processors have taken a real shine to Ocean Spray Craisins® sweetened dried cranberries lately. So much so that the bulk packaging line used for years by Lakeville, MA-based Ocean Spray to pack these tasty morsels had to be upgraded and automated. Manual insertion of bags into boxes and the use of an outdated filler and old case taper just couldn’t keep pace any longer.

The new line, installed at Ocean Spray’s Tomah, WI, plant, packs Craisins in 10- and 25-lb boxes. (For a related story on the controls package that governs the line, see Packaging World, Oct. ’00, p. 66 or packworld.com/ go/ospray.) Speeds are up sharply. Before the new equipment went in, 25-lb boxes were packed at about 5/min, and four operators were required. Now just two operators run the same size box at 15/min. Frequently the line runs around the clock, so when it came to machine selection, a certain kind of supplier was squarely in mind.

“We looked for suppliers whose equipment is durable enough to function in a 24/7 world,” says Dave Frenz, senior process engineer.

Among the more obvious differences between the new line and the old is the filler, a 10-bucket Ishida combination scale from Heat & Control (Hayward, CA). It replaces a simple in-line filler that weighed the entire contents of a box in one go and then dropped the contents into the box.

“With our old filler, we were lucky to be less than a half pound over our target on the 25-lb box,” says Frenz. “Now we’re consistently within six grams. The filler paid for itself in about five months.”

Sophisticated conveying

Ahead of the filler is a complex but efficient system of conveying from Key Technologies (Walla Walla, WA). It takes the Craisins through sorting, grading, slicing and drying processes before depositing finished product on an incline conveyor leading to the packaging equipment.

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