CASE STUDY: SOUTH AFRICAN MANUFACTURER REDUCES PRODUCT GIVEAWAY WITH MULTIHEAD WEIGHER

A leading South African snacks manufacturer has reduced product giveaway by as much as 35% following the installation of an Ishida multihead weigher.

Founded in 1996, Nibbly Bits is a major producer of handcrafted rusks, biscuits, cookies and snacks, supplying products for the Woolworths Group and the Granarie Co., its sister marketing company, as well as carrying out selected contract manufacturing.

In 2011, the company opened a new snacks factory producing a range of rice cakes and pop crisps – crisps made using heat and pressure (‘popping’ like popcorn) rather than deep frying – which contain less than half the fat of traditional crisps. However, the company found that owing to the lightness of this new product, its existing weighing equipment was unable to cope, with too many overweight and underweight packs leading to a high amount of product waste.

The solution offered by Ishida is the company’s CCW-SE-214W-1S/20-PB multihead weigher. Handling typical target weights of between 20g and 85g, the SE-Series weigher achieves an impressive weighing accuracy of under half a gram and a weighing tolerance (standard deviation) of just 0.8g for both bag sizes.

Equally as important, the product that was previously being wasted is now being placed into additional packs, thus greatly improving production efficiency and throughput.

Stephan Drees, operations manager of Nibbly Bits, comments: “The consistency and reliability of the Ishida weigher has created a lot less stress during production. We now have a smooth-running operation delivering highly accurate packs”.