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Poultry/pork processor bags big benefits

Albertville Quality Foods saves labor, improves bagging speeds, cuts giveaway by installing intermittent-motion vf/f/s machine and radial scale.

Pw 8299 Albertville Triangle A

Under the “Top Chick” label, Albertville Quality Foods, Albertville, AL, produces chicken products—including breaded IQF (individually quick frozen) chicken fingers, chicken breasts, chunks, tenders, wings, popcorn, tempura, livers, and gizzards—for both retail and foodservice markets. The company also produces pork sausage products at a second plant in Pontotoc, MS.

Albertville Quality Foods had been bagging/weighing the chicken products manually at its Alabama facility. In fact, the company promoted this manual operation with customers, saying: “We hand-pack every piece of your product to ensure the best quality.”

When Albertville began considering the benefits of increasing production rates through automated bagging and weighing systems, a major objective was not to sacrifice any quality controls when making the transition from manual to automated operations.

Plant manager Ray Kelley notes, “In January 2007, we installed the Advantage Model B35PR intermittent-motion vertical form/fill/seal bagging machine and Selectacom Model A14C8 radial scale manufactured by Triangle Package Machinery (www.trianglepackage.com). The machinery company has a good reputation in our industry, and we knew it would provide reliable service and parts. Triangle, in turn, put us together with another company, Key Technology, Inc. (www.keyww.com), that specializes in high-efficiency feeding, sorting, and conveying systems. The combination has been a good one for us. By using the Triangle bagger with the Key systems, our product quality is even better today than it was with the manual packaging operation.”

Installation procedure

Kelley notes that Triangle technicians were very involved in the installation, operator training, and start-up of the new bagging equipment. He says, “Triangle sent two service men to our plant, and both stayed with us for three weeks. One of them gave classes on the equipment, while the other one gave hands-on training of the machine in operation in the plant. This was very helpful, and they didn’t leave until we were completely comfortable with the machine.”
He adds, “Triangle also supplied very good plant engineering support through a firm named Capper McCall Co. (www.cappermccall.com). A gentleman named Ernie Herrig from Capper McCall stayed in contact with us daily and helped plan the whole project.”

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