Minimising ‘give away’

Profitable potato bagging demands gentle handling and minimal ‘give away’ rates and one David Harrison customer has proven that you don’t have to be a particularly high throughput packer to benefit from high accuracy weighing and bagging.

Growing ware potatoes, a mixture of Maris Piper, King Edwards, Wilja and Estima, on around 200 acres, this customer  has installed a 10 scale Pro-Pack and a Symach automatic palletiser. Guthrie Whyte is third generation in the family business which started as seed potato specialists but changed to ware crops in view of the high cost of growing seed. They supply wholesalers throughout the UK and across to Ireland.

Previously Whyte Farmers (The Bent) of Laurencekirk were using a weigher bagger with large and ‘top up’ trickle belts. Unfortunately this system would regularly overfill their 25 kilo bags by up to 2 kilos, an expensive ‘give away’.

This problem has been addressed by the Pro-Pack with belt conveyors and X3L buckets. This impressive machine can fill bags up to 25 kg per dump.  The tapered buckets are Teflon coated and designed with a front/bottom flap that leaves a clear passage when opened so eliminating blockages. The buckets are arranged in a single row of 10. Besides facilitating a shorter discharge belt, contributing to speedier throughput, the 10 buckets and the machine’s dynamic weighing system give in excess of 250 combinations to achieve consistent results via as few as 5 buckets. The computerised system learns how big the potatoes are and calculates the best match every time to achieve a throughput of 10 bags a minute.

“One of the other reasons we invested in the equipment” explains Guthrie “was due to the changes in our customer needs. Customers want our potatoes to be delivered as freshly bagged as possible. This is extremely important from March onwards, as potatoes coming out of cold store will start to sprout in higher temperatures. Our bagger and palletiser mean that if we receive an order for a full load of potatoes we can have it bagged and delivered within 24 hours. This keeps our customers happy as the potatoes remain in good condition for longer and are therefore easier to sell and can command a premium later in the season”.

The Pro-Pack’s phenomenal accuracy means Whyte Farmers are giving away as little as 3 grams on a 25 Kg bag and handling up to 10 tons an hour (well within the machine’s capabilities). Consequently Guthrie is confident that he will enjoy an early payback on his investment.

Photo cell sensors control incoming volumes and a fully adjustable brush spreads the crop across the belts for efficient throughput. Weighing is automatically paused until the holding hoppers are full ensuring that the system works at peak efficiency.

Guthrie Whyte points out that whilst some operators opt for a vibrating channel feed into the buckets that can get blocked with mud when bagging direct from the field, although this was not a major problem for Whytes.  This is part of an on going cleaning process which ensures that Whyte Farmers have probably the cleanest pack house you are ever likely to see.

Such an efficient weigher bagger deserves a palletiser that matches its performance and Whyte Farmers have matched it with a Symach fully computerised model with a throughput of 15 bags a minute and incorporating an automatic in feed and output system achieving continuous palletising.

Guthrie is particularly pleased with both machines’ ease of emptying one variety before they switch to another and for easy programming from 25 to 10kilo bags. The line can be operated by just two people, one on the bagger and one on the forklift.