Production up 35% at Baxter’s potato plant packing line

Baxters High Brow Produce says it has increased throughput by 38%, reduced production staff and improved potato packing since installing a new automated bagging line. The Merseyside-based chip shop potato grower, says its new bagging ling places, weighs, forms, stitches and palletises up to 4,000 tonnes of potatoes into 25kg sacks every season.

The plant selected Pacepacker for the automation project, and sales manager Ian Merchant explains that the clever bit is handling products with such irregular shapes and sizes.

"There is a tendency for the sack to tip backwards when released on to a moving stitcher conveyor and this, coupled with the potential collapse of the sack mouth, can result in untidy or, worse still, unstitched sacks,"he says.

"The TBC overcomes these problems by first stretching the sack mouth while still on the filling clamp then, by gripping the sack top prior to its release onto a short static conveyor,"he reports.