Flexibility with Microwave Tempering System at Findus

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The main benefit of the Carnitech Microwave Tempering System at Findus is the effective reduction of defrosting time, resulting in far more flexibility than before and thus improving their ability to meet customer demands for daily variation of products.

Findus AB is a constantly expanding Swedish company offering an impressive range of grocery products, frozen and ready meals. Findus has experienced a growing demand for high-quality single portion products in recent years. This has called for the introduction of more flexible production methods at their Bjuv factory.

Quality - the most important ingredient

Apart from the obvious advantage of a daily capacity increase of approx. 20-35 tons of meat products a day, the fully automated grinding/mixing line from Carnitech has made production far more flexible than before. “The most important ingredient in our products is quality. We make sure that our production processes are monitored to ensure that consumers can be completely satisfied. Achieving a consistent, uniform quality in our various meat products has become an effortless task thanks to recipe control and integrated online fat analysis, ,” says production manager Kenneth Malmqvist.

Optimum utilisation of equipment

In the production of meat balls and hamburger patties, for instance, it is vital to keep the fat percentage and temperature constant. Findus says, “The introduction of fat analysis in our production allows us to use the frying equipment to its full extent and in doing so obtaining the best yield from our products. The system offers great potential in terms of using meat with varying fat content.”

Reduction of defrosting time

Raw materials for the meat line come in frozen blocks. “Microwave technology has effectively reduced defrosting time from 24 hours to a few minutes, allowing us to meet daily variations in production demand from our customers. At the end of the day, if we need to produce more than originally planned, we go ahead and do it. We now practise just-in-time delivery from freezer to microwave,” says Malmqvist.

Ergonomic design of priceless value

According to Malmqvist, Carnitech has come up with a beneficial solution that eliminates the strenuous work that employees were exposed to in the unpacking area. Malmqvist says, “Entire pallets of meat blocks are automatically elevated in order for the operator to simply push each block onto the weighing table by means of a moveable bridge-piece. This works extremely well, and its value to our staff is priceless as the risk of work-related injury has been minimised.“

The importance of the turnkey solution

“As we have no technical department of our own, it is of great importance to have one supplier who accepts responsibility for the entire production line, and on whom we can rely for quick – and flexible – assistance. Carnitech is well known for turnkey concepts and was able to meet all our requirements. Therefore, our choice was easy”, concludes Malmqvist.

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