A STORY BEHIND THE MOST AUTOMATED EGG PACKING STATION

Beginning 2003 a delegation from company OVOPEL Spa (whose egg brand name is "COCCODì") together with Fabio Bortolami from Avitec visited Japan to understand more in detail the way of packing eggs with special interest to the way Japan uses to seal egg packs.

THE JAPANESE HYGIENIC PACKING STATION

What Japan has to really teach about egg grading is for sure about quality and hygienic safety. Everything in a modern Japanese packing station is meant to guarantee the maximum product safety, many times despite of the productivity or cost control. The facility layout does not allow the contact between "dirty areas" and "clean areas", the machinery undergo strict cleaning sessions, the product is always double checked by humans before it leaves the company, the eggs are washed with state-of-the-art washers which also dysinfect and dry the shell. Everything which could be imported into a modern concept of european egg packing station, it has been succesfully done in OVOPEL new grading center. OVOPEL strongly believed in innovation of hygienic standards and image for the egg packs, that's why they took the risk to invest several thousands of euros to order a unique production line which allows to use SEALPACK, the new PET egg pack which can be sealed with ultrasonic waves and which is 100% transparent and recyclable.

THE EUROPEAN EFFICIENT PACKING STATION

What was learnt from the Japanese market was not enough to be a successful competitor in the european egg market. Beside the high cost of labour work, Japan did not look very much involved in increasing the efficiency of the production. Most of the tasks were still performed manually and the logistics of the products very often went off optimization with lots of bottle neckles or weak points.
OVOPEL wanted to completely automate the production of the key products with highest numbers. After loading the eggs on the infeed rollers of the Moba Omnia grading machine, the process is entirely automated for 80% of the production. Egg packing, pack sealing, carton wrapping, box filling, pallet forming and traceability are all processes performed in automated way. Of course, reminding of the Japanese care for quality, there are always operators who just have the task of double checking that the final quality of the eggs in the packs is really perfect.

THE ITALIAN PERFECT MIX

So, the concepts were then clear, highest product safety standards and maximum efficiency of process had to be achieved.
Avitec was main contractor for this challenging and demanding project. Avitec understood that to achieve maximum performances most of the machinery and robots had to be specifically engineered for this job, not simply adapted from other sectors. Thanks to the smooth and cooperative partnership between many subjects, Avitec and OVOPEL succedeed in starting what nowadays is considered to be to most advanced packing station both in product quality control and process automation. A really pioneering project in the egg market.

 

Some dates and numbers about the project:

- January 2003: start researches for the Ovopel Project
- December 2003: official commissioning of the project to Avitec
- May 2004: end installation and first running tests
- September 2004: Plant fully operational

-   4 months - 7 people = needed to study the optimal lay-out on paper
-   3 fully automated lines till end pallet with SSCC label
-   6 automatic sealing machines for the new sealed PET egg pack
-   7 wrap-around automatic machines
-   8 Moba Contiflow levels
- 24 automatic egg packing lanes (first biggest Omnia ever built)
- 155 meters of conveyors for crates
- 380 meters of conveyors for egg packs
- 2000 square meters area dedicated to egg grading and packing
- 120.000 eggs/h production capacity

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