How do You Efficiently Slice Cheese with Holes? Leerdammer Cheese at the Center of Interest

15 Jun 2014

Manufacturers in the food industry are constantly working on concepts that serve consumer trends, and nowadays a typical example is easy-to-handle portion packs at a fixed weight. So what is the best practice to slice and pack cheese with irregularly sized holes to ensure on-weight portions and therefore obtain optimum yield?

Innovative technologies help boost the efficiency of food slicing, particularly cheese products. Manufacturers in the food industry are constantly working on concepts that serve consumer trends, and nowadays a typical example is easy-to-handle portion packs at a fixed weight. So what is the best practice to slice and pack cheese with irregularly sized holes to ensure on-weight portions and therefore obtain optimum yield?

GEA Food Solutions has developed a multi-lane pre-scanner system that has been integrated into a fully automated slicing and packaging line in operation at the Dutch BEL GROUP that produces and processes Leerdammer Cheese. Thanks to this complete GEA Line solution, 450 to 500 tons per week can be processed. And here’s how they do it.

After leaving the production hall, the Leerdammer cheese is made available in huge logs packed and sealed in a film wrapping. A robot system handles the transfer and unpacking of each log, including transportation to the GEA Scanning, Slicing and Packaging Line where the next manufacturing process starts under clean room conditions.

Scanning the cheese logs is the first step of the subsequent slicing processes. The GEA OptiScan literally looks into the product using X-ray technology to precisely determine the density distribution. An irregular outer contour is detected, as are holes and other variations in the product shape. On the basis of this data, the intelligent slicer software determines and computes the ideal slice thickness for each portion before cutting. The slicing process can now start, with four cheese logs simultaneously transported through the large cross-section cutting throat of the high-performance GEA GigaSlicer. The integrated control system guarantees optimum slice thickness resulting in portions with the precise weight. This efficiently satisfies the ever-tougher retail and consumer requirements for on-weight portion packs with a pre-defined number of slices.

The next step involves four conveyors that transport the cheese portions to the GEA PowerPakNT packaging machine. Laser sensors supervise the correct positioning of the individual sliced cheese stacks and, if required, automatically adapt the conveying speed to perfectly position the product portions. Each cheese portion – eight slices make a 200 gram pack – is fed into a thermoformed tray (formed using heat and pressure), which is closed in the next step using a thermoformed top lid.

To enable the package to be opened and reclosed, Leerdammer cheese portions are packed in consumer-friendly reclosable trays. Thanks to a GEA-patented technology process in which deep indentations are formed into the outer corners of the trays, not only is convenient handling assured but also the delicate freshness and tasty aroma of the product is preserved even after opening the pack. Branding labels are applied to the trays by a labelling unit while the packages are still in motion in a 4 x 4 configuration. After placing the labels, the trays are separated into single portion packs before being transferred to a unit that takes care of the outer case packaging and final preparation for shipment.

"Taking mandatory legislation rules concerning package weights into consideration, the content of a portion pack must not be more than 4.5 per cent below the weight given on the packaging. By using the scanner technology in the GEA OptiScan, we are able to reach up to 99 percent of on-weight portions," says Arjen Hettinga,

Product Sales Manager at GEA Food Solutions. "Our innovative technology in the whole process adds value for the customer in terms of exceptionally low give-away and an extremely high proportion of correctly produced packages, thus minimizing the need for manual work on the fully automatic GEA Slicing and Packaging Line."

Source: GEA Food Solutions Germany GmbH