Pacepacker Services has designed and built a bespoke collator system for a potato packing company which supplies a major UK food retailer. The prototype machine has paid for itself in less than 12 months through labour savings and productivity improvements.

The company operates two potato packing facilities and at both sites, potatoes are packed into 1-5kg retail sized polybags and then outer sacks. Several years ago, the food retailer approached the potato packing company requesting that potatoes destined for its distribution centres be supplied in smaller 12kg sacks, but the existing collator wasnt versatile enough to cope with different sack sizes.

Pacepacker Services designed a system that collates and places prepacked bags of potatoes ranging from 12-25kg in size into outer sacks. Now at one of the potato packaging companys sites, potatoes are packaged on a form fill seal machine, conveyed over a checkweigher and presented to an inclined elevator, which transports the packs up to the holding doors of the collator system, at speeds of 48 packs per minute.

The collator then uses preprogrammed operating software to selec the number of bags required – usually either eight or 16, pauses the conveyor, and opens the holding doors, allowing the bags to gently dro into an accumulation chamber and then into the outer sack waiting below.