Where Seafood Expertise Meets Accurate Mixing Technology

A wide range of ingredients, some single species, others reliable pre-mixes, arrive frozen at Marin. Once the Cabomar experts have worked out which combination to use in order to produce the desired result, the ingredients are fed into a packing system that includes a pair of identical Ishida 16-head weighers, specially adapted to combine them with great accuracy.

“We originally bought the thermosealer intending to pack a single product,” recalls Enrique. “But the opportunity came up for a contract to supply a quality mix to a big retailer, so we looked into the equipment necessary to do this. Ishida and their Spanish distributor, CIMA, were very helpful and installation went smoothly.”

The company’s knowledge of different shellfish and crustacean species, and its strong links to fishing fleets and freezing plants in the world’s major fishing grounds enable it to select from different combinations of ingredients to produce any one of a range of different seafood mixes that are not just of high quality, but also consistent in taste and texture.

“These seafood mixes are very widely used in Spain,” explains Enrique Freire of Cabomar. “They can be added to rice to make Paella, mixed with a vinaigrette to produce a seafood salad or heated with stock to make a soup.” The products are very popular also in Italy and in fact, during our visit, the line was packing ‘misto scoglio’, used by home cooks and restaurants to prepare seafood pasta.

The misto scoglio was being made up from six different components including mussels with shells, clams, also with shells, and pieces of Humboldt squid. Rounding off the recipe were calamari rings, a mix of shrimp and calamari pieces and another mix of shrimp and mussels without shells.

After quality control, each ingredient is fed into a vibrating trough which channels it to a belt system.

Each belt feeds an elevator which takes the ingredient to the top of one of the Ishida weighers, delivering it to one specific section of the multihead. The multiheads are divided at the top into three sections in a ratio of 5:5:6, so that in combination they accurately weigh six different components into the mix.

The two ‘halves’ of each weighment are combined on a conveyor, which takes them to a thermoforming machine. Here they are delivered via a special distribution system into the newly formed trays, six trays being filled at a time.

The thermoformer can produce thermosealed trays, vacuum bags or, as in the case of the misto scoglio, skinpacks. Another option open to Cabomar is to use the conveyor system to transfer the weighments to a bagmaker instead.