Unilever

As part of the comprehensive technological and strategic reorientation of the Unilever plant in Auerbach, production was systematically refocused on snack products and mini meals. To supply the entire European market from Saxony with maximum efficiency and in accordance with the highest quality standards, Unilever invested in a bespoke packaging solution.

The company commissioned the packaging specialists at WALDNER to design, manufacture and integrate a turnkey, high-performance Snackpot machine.

• Accurate dosing of different ingredients: The machine must process heterogeneous components reliably. Dry raw materials and chunky products such as pasta and rice must be precisely dosed into the snack cups and then packaged.
• Fixed hall dimensions: The installation site was an existing factory hall, the structural conditions of which did not allow for any significant alterations. The entire large-scale machine had to be precisely planned around the existing structural support columns and integrated into the infrastructure.
• Higher output with exact weight: To achieve the required output volumes, an exceptionally high number of cups had to be filled simultaneously and with absolute weight accuracy.

WALDNER implemented a plant concept for Unilever that is unique in terms of its scale. The turnkey line connects the primary filling plant directly to two synchronised final packaging lines.

To make optimum use of the limited floor space in the existing hall, WALDNER designed a highly efficient machine cluster comprising three lines, which extends architecturally across two storeys. At the heart of the Snackpot packaging machine is an extremely high-performance dosing system that continuously fills twelve snack pots in parallel per cycle.

Thanks to this highly parallel process control, the plant achieves a stable production capacity of approximately 480 pots per minute and is regarded as the most powerful solution on the market.