What the client needed
Our client is one of the largest frozen ready meals producers in the US, making two million meals every day at three manufacturing facilities. The firm contacted Apple when it wanted to replace one of its depositing machines which was being used to apply gravy and sauces to ready meal trays and was losing significant amounts through lack of accuracy.
What we did
With its previous equipment, our client had been losing around 10-12 grammes in wastage per ready meal. This production line processes 120 meals per minute on a two-shift, six-day system, so even a small amount of wastage on each tray adds up to large quantities overall. We could guarantee that our super-efficient, high speed food depositor, the RBB300, would eliminate 85% of its food waste. After a six-month period we were asked to supply a replacement for another depositor system on the ready meals production line: an eight-head system operating at a rate of 240 meals per minute. A bespoke hybrid depositing unit, manufactured to the client’s specific requirements, was delivered and installed and the equipment was fully working within six days. Orders for a further two eight-head depositors followed shortly afterwards.
The outcome
The efficiency of our equipment helped our client make savings on production lines of between US$500 and US$1,500 per shift in waste product alone. The commissioning engineering consultant at our client said: “When you consider that we have more than 20 production lines producing well over a million meals per day, the investment in high accuracy depositors from Apple International made absolute sense.”
