Anuga FoodTec 2024 live: Cama Group showcases “breakthrough” machine flexibility for confectionery market

20 Mar 2024 --- Cama Group, known for its end-of-line secondary and tertiary packaging, is presenting its “Breakthrough Generation” technology, showcasing “highly agile multi-industry, multi-format packaging machine capabilities” at Anuga FoodTec 2024 in Cologne, Germany. 

The company is displaying an IF296 monoblock packaging machine crafted to meet the requirements of a European confectionery client.

The monoblock machine features a tray-forming and loading unit, combining the latest digital, servo and robotic technologies in a reduced-footprint machine capable of handling multiple packaging recipes.

Alessandro Rocca, group sales director for Cama Group, elaborates on the machine’s capabilities and market demands in an interview with Packaging Insights at the show floor.

“This machine can pre-configure and load carton boxes of a confectionery product. It can load up to 300 plus products per minute coming from two unbalanced infits,” he explains.

“We have the former machine integrated, we have two multiple racetracks, and then we’ve got the first robot that can configure several patterns of products into a phasing conveyor. The last robot loads the configuration into the tray.”

“The machine is flexible because you can handle different products in different patterns,” he notes. “And there are also some interesting features, such as augmented reality. So by scanning this QR code, the machine can give you information about maintenance, spare parts changeover and predictive maintenance of the machine.”

The IF296 case packer by Cama Group.Faster recipe change
Cama’s monoblock solutions boast modular designs, allowing for “future evolution” and adaptation to changing industry demands, thus “maximizing investment value” for operators.

The integrated AR functionality gives operators more “intimate, intuitive and unrestricted” insights into the machine’s internals, enabling and supporting far more effective and efficient training, operation, batch changeover, maintenance and spare identification and ordering.

Rocca emphasizes the machine’s flexibility in handling different products and configurations, citing chocolate packaging as a prime example. “With this case packer, we are packing chocolate into cartons.”

“Confectionery is one of our main markets out of four sectors. Cama Group caters to 20–25% of confectionery products each year,” Rocca notes.

“The customer demands flexibility in confectionery — the customer wants to be flexible in product configuration handling and changeover. So, the Cama answer is to give these robotic lines the ability to have a fast changeover and enable them to handle different products with a faster recipe change. This is the key for confectionery.”

In other live Packaging Insights coverage of the trade event, Sealpac is exhibiting its new traysealing technology alongside a “Supermarket of Innovations” concept.

By Radhika Sikaria, with live reporting from Natalie Schwertheim at Anuga FoodTec 2024

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