New Baader division to focus on weighing and grading

The division’s main objective is to offer customers solid and hygienic equipment combined with innovative production software.

The convergence of these devices will allow Baader customers to implement integrated business solutions – a total processing solution that combines a customers’ specific need for food processing equipment with a data collecting system that helps the customer to control the production processes and eventually achieve overall business goals.

The product weight is, together with other product characteristics, essential for how the product should be handled throughout the entire processing line. Therefore the company says that all modern fish processing industries must focus on weighing equipment as an important input to decision making. Baader uses weighing input to optimise the distribution of un-gutted fish between various gutting machines and manual gutting, and weighing input is also used to decide if a fish should be sent directly to whole fish grading or to the filleting line. The production software uses the weighing data to assist the decision makers on how to make the best out of a given raw material input.

Another important field of interest for Baader is to use weighing equipment to control yield performance, e.g. throughout the filleting line. Yield is where the money is today, and by monitoring and controlling machine and operator’s performance in real-time, the filleting line can be continuously adjusted to perform at its very best. Weighing equipment, both dynamic weighing units and hopper scales, measure lost performance and the software system informs the user to adjust if necessary. Baader has also launched its Lighthouses, which are information stands that make important data available directly on site and alert personnel if yield performance drops somewhere in the process.

Weighing is obviously also an important issue when it comes to grading and batching. Baader says that an accurate weighing unit and a well-proportioned grader will minimise customer’s give-away and has put a lot of engineering resources into designing a dynamic weighing unit that can meet the market’s high demands on accuracy. The new weighing unit has a unique tara function that takes into account sticky meat on the belt during production. Besides the weighing accuracy, focus has also been on designing a highly hygienic weighing unit where wash-down and daily maintenance is simple and timesaving.