A well-known South African snacks manufacturer has reduced product giveaway by as much as 35 percent following the installation of an Ishida multihead weigher. Founded in 1996, Nib...
A well-known South African snacks manufacturer has reduced product giveaway by as much as 35 percent following the installation of an Ishida multihead weigher. Founded in 1996, Nibbly Bits is a major producer of handcrafted rusks, biscuits, cookies and snacks, supplying products for the Woolworths Group and the Granarie Co, its sister marketing company, as well as carrying out selected contract manufacturing. In 2011 the company opened a new snacks factory producing a range of rice cakes and pop crisps - crisps which are made by heat and pressure ('popping' like popcorn) rather than deep frying, to deliver less than half the fat of traditional crisps. However, the company found owing to the lightness of this new product, its existing weighing equipment was unable to cope, with too many overweight and underweight packs that led to a high amount of product waste. The solution offered by Ishida is the company's CCW-SE-214W-1S/20-PB multihead weigher. Handling typical target weights of 20g and 85g, the SE-weigher achieves an impressive weighing accuracy of below half a gram and a weighing tolerance (standard deviation) of just 0.8g for both bag sizes. Equally important, product that was previously wasted is now being placed into additional packs, thus greatly improving production efficiencies and throughput. The CCW-SE-214 features a weight sensor in the dispersion table that automatically adjusts the product feed, ensuring a consistent supply to the radial feeders.