UK: Marco Pack-House systems improve productivity and quality for B H Savidge

Major UK raspberry grower and packer B H Savidge and Sons are benefitting from the financial and logistical improvements brought about following their investment in Marco Pack House Improvement equipment at their farm near Ross on Wye in Herefordshire. The installation includes a 10 station Marco Yield Control Module (YCM) and off line ‘e’ weighing Control Module (eCM).

The Marco YCM has been developed to virtually eliminate giveaway/overpack and provide full electronic traceability in line with packing legislation. The YCM features Marco’s innovative optimisation software, which constantly monitors and adjusts target weight tolerances at individual packing stations in order to maintain optimum pack weight consistency within fractions of a gram. The YCM provides a zero risk - rapid return investment that typically pays for itself in less than one growing season.

The Marco eCM provides offline sampling data to verify the packs continue to meet the three packers’ codes, maintaining open pack integrity validation between the packing station and the heat sealer. This provides a very cost effective substitute for designated check-weighers in each line and eliminates manual record keeping.

Savidge’s Farm Manager Andrew Roberts is delighted with the instant improvements to operation of the pack house: “The packing of raspberries requires a fine balance between speed and presentation to ensure we deliver accurate pack weights of the highest quality fruits. The intuitive Marco YCM system is very easy for our operators to use and has already reduced pack giveaway to fractions of a gram, whilst also significantly improving packing speed. The eCM reduces our QC burden and ensures ‘best practice’ in line with packing legislation. Prior to this installation we used conventional digital scales and operators had to manually log batch data.“

For more information:
Mandy Hart
Marco
Tel: 0044 1342 870103
[email protected]
www.marco.co.uk