Newtec’s 2008PCM Mini Weigher solution for processed food products

Newtec's 2008PCM Mini Weigher addresses the needs of the fresh produce and ready-to-eat industries with accurate and high-speed services.

Newtec is a pioneer in providing weighing, packing and sorting machinery mainly for fruits and vegetables, supplying companies with customised solutions since the 1970s. The company boasts many installations during its operating years and technology such as Newtec’s 2008PCM Mini Weigher is a testament to the company’s adaptability and innovation when it comes to growing trends and needs within the fresh produce industry.

To meet the demand for ever-increasing demands for ready-to-eat food, Newtec invented the 2008PCM Mini Weigher.

The 2008PCM Mini Weigher has become a popular choice for accurate, high-speed weighing of a range of processed food products such as fresh and dried fruit, snacks and frozen foods. Newtec has considered a wide range of parameters for the 2008 PCM Mini Weigher technology such as the handling of small and mixed products, gentle processing that preserves the quality of the product, as well as machinery that is easy to maintain and clean. In addition, Newtec’s Mini Weigher provides a sustainable solution for working with large product quantities with a minimal giveaway of less than 0.4% and a small footprint, which makes it easier to handle and connect to other Mini Weighers. Its small footprint (as stand-alone or as a line with more machines connected) also makes possible the preservation of space with a much stronger reliance on flexible and automated machinery for the same production rates.

Newtec’s Mini Weigher for more reliance on technology

The reality of Brexit has made increasingly clear the need for maintaining company production levels while reducing labour costs and reliance. Combined with the increasingly widespread demand for sustainability practices, Newtec’s services as a fruit and vegetables automatised machinery supplier could not be more relevant for customers who are looking for cost-effective and efficient solutions, especially during a time in the UK when manual labour shortages can pose challenges for the production industry.

Newtec UK technical sales manager Paul Graham says: Over the past three years, the challenge has been getting the labour to pack these products manually, so not only is there a cost-saving by machine packing, but it also means that we can continue supplying our customers. Currently, labour is very hard to find with a lot of the immigrant labour returning home after Brexit. Manual labour is not readily available and the skill levels are not consistent and that means that there is the need to constantly train operators.

Newtec’s involvement in tackling the challenges created by Brexit while keeping production and cost in control has been invaluable in terms of technology supplies, cost-reduction, production efficiency and ease of use. The automation of the production process means for customers that there is less need for manual work and more reliance on technology, which is cost-effective while remaining fast and sensitive to fresh produce and the environment.

Newtec’s Mini Weigher as a sustainable and flexible solution

From a consistent commitment to the way customers produce and pack their products to careful attention to cost-effectiveness, Newtec’s Mini Weigher enhances automation, flexibility, accuracy and consideration to the customer’s product.

Graham notes the Mini Weigher’s capacity to better process the produce with minimum waste and flexibility in output and packaging: Using the mini weighers on mixed products gives better utilisation of each produce and improves product giveaway.

For customers, this means that, as Graham explains: The way the system works gives total flexibility, as any product can be run on any machine. We can switch from four-mix to three-mix, etc, in a matter of minutes and back again, making small runs more cost-effective.

This holds several benefits for the ready-to-eat food industry, as more options are available with the Mini Weigher technology and the range of food being processed can be further expanded without additional time or cost.

In terms of packaging, Graham adds: We mainly pack into punnets. These can be plastic, card, etc, and we have various sizes and shapes of chute to suit the punnets. These can be changed very quickly.

Packaging flexibility and adaptability adds to the effectiveness of the technology for the ready-to-eat and food processing industries, which require easy-to-use and sustainable packaging that is adaptable to the products.

Mini Weigher efficiency enables maintaining production levels while delivering fresh quality fruit, thus supporting sustainability practices for the industry. Customer reliance on product quality is therefore not compromised by the speed of production, but benefits through being enhanced by high-capacity processing, minimal product waste and delivery of local produce to the wider community.

High-speed Mini Weigher automation efficiency

Newtec’s Mini Weigher solutions (for example, six Mini Weighers connected across two lines or four Mini weighers connected in one line) are complete automated weighing and packing line that functions at high capacity and are capable of processing, mixing and packing products both with ease and high speed of operation. This means that the customer’s aim to pack mixed products quickly and efficiently while reducing the need for work by hand can be met successfully. This is due to the modular configuration of the Mini Weigher enabling accurate weighing (according to recipe), the mixing of a wide variety of fruits and at the target weight.

The Newtec 2008 PCM machine can run a single unit or it can be networked to run multiple products. Each machine is a combination weigher, giving high accuracy at up to 70 portions per min from 50g to 500g.

On a four-product mix, three products are individually set to a given weight and then the last fourth product can be used to top up to the target weight required.

According to Graham: The Newtec weighing machines are on their own network. The main setting is done through the master machine, the indexing conveyor is linked to Newtec and punnet sizes can be set on the human-machine interface (HMI) on the indexing conveyor. The line has a sequence stop/start facility.

Adding to the machine’s high speed, this level of automation that Newtec’s Mini Weigher offers helps customers better manage production and control food processing and packaging better, especially when it comes to saving time, energy and resources. This technology benefits customers as much through its ability to better organise production by connecting everything through the Newtec HMI as through the high speed and efficiency of its operations.