The Client
Sugar Creek Packing Company is a co-man/co-pack in Cincinnati that serves the retail and foodservice industries. They operate six manufacturing and packaging facilities in Ohio, Indiana, and Kansas. Bacon was the core competency upon which the brand was founded, but leading up to 2020, Sugar Creek expanded to include a variety of mostly ready-to-eat meats. This included one line of meatballs.
The Challenge
While the packaging industry has seen a trend towards automation, Sugar Creek has been slow to make that transition due to the variability of proteins.
“I would say in the last three to four years we’ve become more automated,” Alex Hauck, VP, Engineering, at Sugar Creek said to Packaging World. “Our industry traditionally didn’t lend itself to a lot of automation, but there definitely have been advances in the last several years and we’ve strategically taken advantage of those opportunities. It’s just with the way the labor force is these days, you really have to get into more automation. Investment in automation definitely is worthwhile, the ROI is there for sure.”
After transitioning the meatball packaging operations to Indiana, packaging engineer Tim McDermott began looking for new frozen food combination scales and depositing solutions to replace the legacy packaging equipment. He determined that a Yamato combination scale and multi-point depositor would seamlessly integrate with the thermoforming machinery.
How Yamato Met the Challenge
“That depositing system was a big factor in our decision,” Hauck says. “Two [Yamato] reps came out and talked to us about the depositor, how it worked, and its sanitary design, which is very important in a meat facility. These particular scales are in a ready-to-eat food production room, which for us has the highest level of scrutiny as far as sanitary design. We liked Yamato’s methodology around correctly sizing a scale, selecting the depositor that would best fit, showing us how they would fit together, and demonstrating how they can be removed for cleaning and maintenance. A lot of those factors went into our decision.”
The first benefit after installing the Yamato frozen food combination scales and depositors was labor reduction. There was also a significant improvement in throughput. Prior to the installation of the Yamato lines, Sugar Creek was only achieving half the rated throughput on their meatball lines.
An additional benefit was the improvement in tolerance. The Yamato frozen food combination scales precisely select the best combination of meatballs for every pocket. The giveaway has improved to be within a 0.5% threshold compared to the 7% giveaway on the old machines.
Learn More
Yamato tray-filling solutions offer food packagers like Sugar Creek durable, customizable solutions that can grow to meet their evolving needs. To learn more about how our multihead weighers are ideal for frozen food and Yamato’s other weighing products, contact us for more information.
