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Van Damme uses Ishida to add variety and value

06/01/1999

Strip multipacks of confectionery in which each strip pack contains a different mixture: that’s just one of the products that Belgian confectioner Van Damme is bringing to market using a 24-head Ishida multihead weigher with special software, over a vertical Ishida bagmaker.

Famous for its marshmallows the firm, based at Wetteren, has diversified into colourful assortments for the European teenage market, which often include free gifts. The ingredients are fed by hand onto vibratory conveyors, via a special inlet chute to the six-sectioned dispersion feeder table of an Ishida CCW-DZ-224 weighing machine.

The Ishida weigher can comfortably mix-weigh six separate products, and the geometry at the top of the weighing machine is readily adjustable to accommodate less or more. Each multipack that comes off the line is made up of between two and six joined strip packs. For each individual strip pack, the Ishida weighing machine can vary both the number of different ingredients used and their proportions.

The secret of this versatility and variety lies in the Ishida weighing machine software, which also allows each weigher section to be individually set to either count or weigh priority. Another benefit of the software is Consecutive Topping, an Ishida feature that improves overall weighing machine accuracy by avoiding the accumulation of individual section tolerances.

Because some of the products to be mix-weighed are rather long, Ishida applied modifications to the weigher using successful experience from other applications, such as salt sticks or dry spaghetti. These include specially shaped radial feeder troughs and shrouds for the pool hoppers.

The individual strip bags packed by Van Damme weigh about 25g, with an overall target weight per multipack of between 50 and 150g. The Ishida can fill these at a rate of 60 wpm.

“It’s our business to delight the consumer with quality and variety” says Bart Schneider of Van Damme. “We bought Ishida weighing equipment because great versatility was needed here, and that’s what we’ve got, with no sacrifice of accuracy.” And, talking of versatility, the Ishida is just as often employed in packing Van Damme’s more mainstream products: large resealable assortment bags of 500 and 1000g.