The Client

Tasteful Selections LLC is a specialty potato brand that prides itself on modernizing the potato for the modern lifestyle. The brand has family growers from California, Nevada, and Arizona, and it is also a joint venture of Wisconsin’s RPE, CSS Farms, and Plover River Farms Alliance Inc.

Since 2010, Tasteful Selections has sought to make cooking easier and faster with pre-washed and pre-peeled potatoes. The company markets itself around the concept of “rescued moments,” which has its own Twitter hashtag and celebrates time saved in the kitchen that can be better spent with family.

The Challenge

In 2015, Tasteful Selections was building a new facility and sought to improve their operations. Nathan Bender, the Vice President of Plant Operations, knew it was time for a change. Said Bender, “Tasteful Selections had started in a smaller facility in 2010, and we originally were using a certain type of checkweigher. We just always struggled with those, both with speed and accuracy. We had Yamato scales feeding the bagger, and those were great, but this other brand of checkweigher downstream from the bagger just wasn’t doing the job.”

How Yamato Checkweighers Helped

Bender had observed Yamato checkweighers in Europe on different packing lines and was impressed. When the new Alvin, California facility was being built, Tasteful Selections turned to Yamato once more.

According to Bender, “We bought seven more checkweighers, and we had them running in our new facility in 2015. Over the years, we’ve bought more, and as of a new installation just this month, we now have 13 Yamato I-Series checkweighers here at the Alvin facility.”

Said Bender, “What we like about them is the speed and the accuracy. Yamato’s always been known to have highly accurate scales. That has always been our challenge — to find a highly accurate checkweigher to make sure that the product that got put in the bag is of the weight that the customer requires, or that we’re posting on the bag.”

Bender and his team trusted Yamato’s checkweighers to be accurate and uphold Tasteful Selections’ integrity as a brand. They trusted Yamato so much, in fact, that over the years the company has transitioned to a checkweigher operation that consists almost entirely of Yamato machines. In that time Bender has found himself impressed with the durability of the checkweighers. Said Bender, “We’ve needed a few repairs, mainly wear items like belts. The brand we had prior, we were burning up a lot of motors — not so anymore. I would say the overall use and wear and tear on these has been surprisingly good, but I think that’s also in part because Yamato has always been really good to work with on maintenance.”

Tasteful Selections has never regretted turning to Yamato when they were looking for quality and efficiency. The checkweighers have allowed the company to continue producing convenient and delicious potatoes for the everyday person.

Learn More

With customizable components and durable, compact design, Yamato checkweighers offer food producers like Tasteful Selections high-quality food packing solutions to meet their ever-changing needs. To learn more about this and our many other automatic weighing solutions, visit the Yamato Americas website or contact us for more information.

(Quote Source – Packaging World)

The Bermudez Group owns six food-production companies, with operations in countries such as Costa Rica, Trinidad, Jamaica, and Barbados. The firm Alimentos Bermudez is part of the group, founded in 1989, and is the leading company in cookies and snacks in the Caribbean. The firm even received the United Nations Industrial Development (UNIDO) prize for innovation for medium-sized companies.

With its ever-growing success, Alimentos Bermudez began to seek out ways to improve the snack packaging process and achieve greater flexibility and efficiency so they could better serve a growing market, which included countries and Central America and the Caribbean. The firm needed to find the best equipment available on the market that would suit their needs. Bermudez had to take into account factors like productivity, cost, and quality when deciding on new packaging equipment and studied what was available on the market.

Mitra Sankar, the Alimentos Bermudez technical support manager, reflected on this process, noting that the company “visited many companies and installations in Latin America and India.” Through this process, Mitra and his fellow employees learned a great deal about what made for successful manufacturing and packaging. It was imperative that they chose the absolute best machinery on the market for their Costa Rica plant.

Mitra and his colleagues ultimately decided on two baggers from Kliklok-Woodman and paired these with Yamato’s 16-bucket combination scale. The firm recognized that Yamato was a leader in the industry, with nearly a century’s worth of experience in manufacturing weighers and scales for many different industries and uses. Mitra noted that he recognized Yamato was the right choice because their outstanding precision, durability, and operations were user-friendly and allowed for easy cleaning and maintenance.

The Process

The ADW-516-SN Yamato multihead weighers are the start of the snack packaging and sealing process. These weighers stand out because they are so versatile. The multihead weighers can handle different types of snacks at different weights and consistencies. The ADW-516-SN weighers can package 120 units per minute and use a weight calculation system to select the best combination of 4-6 weighing bins. These systems guarantee precision and uniform distribution of any snack product. The product moves from the feeding bins to the weighing hoppers. A load cell sends a signal indicating the quantity of product that should be put into the weighing hoppers. The machine picks the proper hopper to guarantee the most accurate weight.

From the weighers, the product is discharged to the bagger. In this instance, Bermudez chose a Kliklok-Woodman vertical bagger, which allowed for further precision and low levels of waste.

Yamato’s Contribution

Bermudez credits Yamato with making the snack packaging process a success. In this particular instance, bananas and plantains were able to be packaged precisely and quickly, and Yamato helped the firm maintain their position as a leader in snack products.

Consider Yamato for your packaging needs and achieve stunning results like Alimentos Bermudez.

(Quote Source – Packaging World)

Based in Ukiah, California, The Baking Company of Ukiah is a division of Pamela’s Products. The company is known for producing and packaging natural and gluten-free snack foods. These high-quality snack foods include cookies, crackers, and baking mixes that are sold in retail and to foodservice customers. Pamela’s Products prides itself on using eco-friendly packaging that is recycled or recyclable and printed with soy ink.

Pamela’s Products was experiencing difficulty on the bagging line and it was clear they were in need of an upgrade in machinery. The company began searching for a quality solution and found one in Yamato Americas and Triangle Package Machinery Company. Alana Rouse, Vice President of Operations for Pamela’s Products, declared that “Through some fellow cookie and cracker manufacturers, we were hearing good things about the Model XYS08 continuous-motion vertical form/fill/seal bagging equipment from Triangle Package Machinery Co. coupled with the Yamato ADW-A-0314S scale from Yamato Americas. We decided to evaluate the equipment in terms of usefulness for our operations.”

Rouse and her colleagues quickly came to the conclusion that partnering with Yamato was the way to go. The Triangle XYS08, when partnered with the 14-head Yamato weigh scale can fill up to 150 snack bags a minute. The machine has a fast bag size and style changeover capability that allows it to function flawlessly. The machinery can handle a variety of bag sizes, from 2.5 to 8 inches wide and accommodate supported and unsupported films. The weigh scale also allows for bag sealing in heat seal or ultrasonic cold seal. In addition, the duo of The Triangle XYS08 and the 14-head Yamato weigh scale results in a fairly compact piece of machinery that doesn’t take up much space.

Pamela’s Products knew that Yamato’s speed and quality would keep them at the top of the snack food game. The new machinery was installed in November of 2016, and the company could see and feel the difference right away. Rouse expressed her pleasure with the product, stating that “Installation of the new bagger/weigher system made an immediate impact on the amount of finished packages we could produce. Right now, we are using the system for 1 oz to 9 oz packages, and they are high quality and high integrity. On average, we are running about 45-50 bags per minute for the 9 oz bags as opposed to our previous rates of 25 bags per minute. So we’ve doubled our bagging speeds.”

As you can see, trusting in Yamato made all the difference for the team over at Pamela’s Products. If you’re seeking quality and speed in packaging, Yamato is here to help you as well. We offer a wealth of information on the machinery you need to increase your company’s efficiency and stay at the top of your game.

(Quote Source – Packaging World)