March 13, 2012

Meyn-Ishida equips Russian chicken processing plant

Meyn-Ishida has finished the installation of a chicken processing and packing plant invested by ZAO Prioskolie in Russia's Belgorod province.

The plant includes Ishida's recently-developed weigh-batching technology, which has revolutionised the speed, accuracy and compactness of styling and packing operations.

Prioskolie is Russia's largest poultry producer, involved in breeding, rearing, feed production and processing. Meyn-Ishida is an alliance between Ishida and poultry processing equipment and systems producer, Meyn, in order to offer complete, single-source processing and packing plants, typically on greenfield sites.

Prioskolie wished to scale up its operations and at the same time to reap the benefits of an integrated manufacturing execution system from a single supplier.  Specifically, the company was looking for a plant that could ensure the highest yield from each delivery of live birds, together with the most efficient use of manpower and automation, and the fullest degree of control and traceability.

This implied that the chosen supplier would need to be expert in every department, from live bird handling and gas stunning through to the management of crates and trays. Meyn-Ishida was selected by Prioskolie to design, supply and install a new '10,500 birds per hour' plant at Valuyki, to be capable of expansion to 12,000 birds per hour.

In Meyn-Ishida's integrated plant design, plucked and eviscerated birds are automatically assessed for packing whole or for cut-up. Overall, about 50% follow the whole-bird packing channel, while 50% are rehung and enter one of the two cut up lines.  This versatile section can be programmed to cut to a number of different patterns, yielding a wide variety of pieces, following the sequence wings-breasts-legs.

Whatever the piece-pattern chosen, the resulting pieces are fed to four complete lines, each capable of composing well-styled, tightly weight-controlled packs of wings, legs, breasts or other cuts, then delivering them for flow-wrapping, labelling, placing in crates and palletising.