An “all-in-one” solution for dry pasta packaging

An “all-in-one” solution for dry pasta packaging 860 484 Senzani Brevetti S.p.A.

Consulting service and tailor-made solutions to solve the challenges of a wide variety of businesses in the name of innovation and sustainability: with Valfleuri, Senzani Brevetti has once again proven to be a reliable partner for development. The French company, one of the leading pasta producers in the country, has chosen the Faenza-based company for its first cardboard packaging project, aiming at replacing plastic bags.

Following the company’s requirements, Senzani’s engineers developed a tailor-made solution that combines flexibility and high performances. It is a special vertical cartoner, model VCMX8S, capable of handling 19 different product recipes and, to be more precise: 15 different types of dry pasta (from cous-cous to nests of 10mm-wide pasta), packed in 13 different types of carton, with traditional or labyrinth closure.

An all-in-one solution that is characterised by a very high speed, ranging from 120 cartons/min for pasta nests up to 200 cartons/min for the other products. And there is more: Valfleuri’s production is quite varied, and the company needs to repeatedly switch from one format to another about every 2 hours. To meet this requirement, Senzani has managed, for this machine, to guarantee a maximum changeover time of 15 minutes for the most demanding formats, while the other format changeovers are almost immediate (via button).

How? To reduce changeover times and the possibility of human error, the different components to be adjusted at each format change have been specially manufactured by Senzani for all recipes, so that they simply have to be replaced each time (plug&play). Mobile trolleys where these components can be stored when not in use have also been constructed, using colour codes corresponding to the different recipes for greater user-friendliness and intuitiveness.

The possibility of setting numerous parameters via the HMI also contributes to the increased user-friendliness, while ergonomics has been improved by enlarging the changeover area, enabling the operator to carry out different operations, such as component replacement, by accessing the machine directly through the machine doors.

Thanks to these features, the VCMX8S, recently installed at the Wittenheim plant in France, is already potentially capable of covering the company’s entire production by itself, should they decide to convert 100% of the packaging to cardboard.

Want to find out more? Watch the video!