For more than 70 years, Honeyville has grown to become one of the nation’s top producers of grains, flours, specialty ingredients and food services to food manufacturers around the world. From its Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., facility, Honeyville manufactures and packages millions of pounds of products every week. And the role of measuring, filling and packaging much of that product falls on a fleet of nine auger and cup fillers on its vertical and horizontal form fill seal machines, as well as its cupping and canning lines.
The auger and cup fillers are designed to integrate with automatic equipment such as baggers, pouch machines, cartoners, conveyors and vertical form fill seal systems. A core element of Honeyville’s business model includes blending many additional ingredients into its products. To accommodate this demand, Honeyville uses a variety of specialized blenders, each having a high-level capacity. After the product is blended in large totes, they are packaged, depending on application, in any number of pack styles, such as horizontal fill packages and zip pouches, cans, paper cups, totes and pre-made, pillow, flat bottom and bulk bags.
One of Honeyville’s challenges is that many of the products it blends and packages are small in quantity, such as 80 grams. And within that 80-gram mix, other ingredients are often included, some of which are just a few grams need to be blended in. Cup fillers are designed to fill very small particulates with high accuracy.
“We need to provide accuracy to our customers so they get consistent, uniform blended ingredients in their applications, and we don’t want to short our customers or give away product; we have to protect the interest of the company,” says Richard Larsen, vice president of facilities, Honeyville. “And the [auger and cup filler] equipment gave us the ability to do that.”
Larsen also says the addition of fillers uniquely positions the company because no other West Coast supplier has the versatility in packaging that Honeyville now has.
Cup Filler: Spee-Dee Packaging Machinery’s Servo Cup Filler at 150 Fills per Minute
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