Fishing and processing company Vísir, based at Grindavík in the south of Iceland, has installed a Marel FleXitrim system.
This new flowline streamlines the infeed of pre-trimmed fillets to the FleXicut system and enables automatic quality control. This new flowline replaces the trimming line concept that has been an essential part of fish processing in Iceland until now.
Since Vísir’s new factory opened in 2014 with the FleXicut automatic pinboning and portioning machine, constant alterations have been made to improve the flow and increase quality. FleXitrim is a major step forward in this continuing development. It further reduces the amount of manual labour needed in trimming and automates quality control, by tracing each fillet to individual operators and providing bone detection feedback from the FleXicut.
FleXicut’s automatisation of the bone detection and removal process significantly improves product handling and yield, optimising utilization of each fillet and leading to benefits all the way through processing. The development of FleXitrim marks another step forward for the whitefish processing industry and enables processors with FleXicut to now enjoy an even more automated and efficient process. FleXitrim streamlines the infeed of pre-trimmed fillets to the FleXicut and ensures there’s no overload.
According to Ómar Enoksson, Production Manager at Vísir, they immediately saw a big difference in the flow.
“The new line arranges the fillets into the cutting machine, which evens out the flow,” he said. “Since we use X-ray technology to find the bones and the line is connected with the cutting machine, quality control is actually electronic.”
FleXitrim delivers fillets to work stations where natural and filleting defects are manually removed before the fillet is weighed and released back into the process. The system offers individual performance monitoring for yield, throughput and quality. It automatically reports information on pre-trimming quality back to the operators, a feature that eliminates the unpopular role of quality inspector.
The new features of the FleXitrim, fully integrated with the current FleXicut system, make it the only concept on the market that offers the sophisticated combination of automated quality control and full traceability to individual portions all the way to the final pack.
