Tray Sealer Ensures Elegant Packs For Gourmet Meals

Well connected with major supermarket chains, Orient Plaza often functions as a consultant, helping to identify gaps at the top end of the cooked ready-meal market and putting together tempting products to fill them, such as crispy fried pork in sweet and sour sauce with fried noodles. Ishida’s Qualitech division has been collaborating for years with the UK’s major food manufacturers and retailers to develop and refine the elegant ’Inside Cut’ tray sealing approach, which is proven to reduce film consumption by 5%. In addition, the technology produces packs in which the sealing film is precision cut, with no film extending beyond the tray edges. This improved pack appearance was what attracted Yongli Chang, Development Director at Orient Plaza. The chosen solution was the Ishida QX775, a high performance inside cut tray sealer capable of sealing up to 100 packs per minute in a single lane configuration. Its precision tooling, servo motor technology and advanced software ensure superior positioning accuracy and a high quality seal. With the Ishida QX775, each tooling set is designed for a specific customer requirement, and includes tray transfer arms, coated sealing profiles and individual heaters and thermocouples. To allow Modified Atmosphere (MAP) or vacuum packing, each tooling set is equipped with ports and its integrity has been fully tested under positive and negative pressure. At any given time, Orient Plaza has over a hundred different products to pack, varying in pack weight from 350g to 800g. After intense discussion and study of the existing packing arrangements, the Ishida team came up with six custom-made tool sets to handle Orient Plaza’s complex needs. The trays are moved, typically in groups of four, to the infeed section of the QX775. Gripper arms position the trays within the tray sealer tool and withdraw. The lower tool rises, lifting the packs to meet the film and the upper, heated tool, which presses down, firmly sealing the trays. The lower tool then moves down to its original position, and the packs are placed on the outfeed conveyor by the gripper arms. Forming a reliable, smart-looking seal in this way takes just 4 seconds. After sealing, the packs are taken to a cold store. Batches are then called out as needed, labelled appropriately and checkweighed on an Ishida DACS. The QX775 is designed to minimise downtime of any kind. At product changeovers, the tools are released by a single push button, a system unique to Ishida. Washdown is also quick and easy, with all product feed areas being sealed to IP65 standards.