Investment by Aviko Germany in Packaging Technology Increases French Fry Production Capacity to 40 Tons per Hour

Aviko Germany’s production facility in Rain, Bavaria, processes 40 tons of potatoes per hour, primarily into French fries

French fries consumption is on the rise: per capita consumption of frozen potato products has been increasing for many years now. As a result, potato processing specialist Aviko Germany has been working at full capacity to meet the demand for frozen fries from retailers and food service alike. Replacing the weighing systems with next generation models was an important step for the company to maintain its growth strategy. New Ishida multihead weighers are a key contributor to Aviko's boost in production output. 

Aviko Germany produces frozen potato products from fresh potatoes at its site in Rain, Bavaria. Around 40t of the yellow tubers are processed every hour, the vast majority of them into French Fries, the rest into wedges and fried potatoes. Such huge production volumes require high-performance packaging systems. Aviko's production facility has eight Ishida multihead weighers available for this purpose, which are set up next to each other in an impressive phalanx.

Stefan Leuker, Head of Maintenance at Aviko, overseeing the operation of Ishida multihead weighers to ensure the efficient and high-speed production of French fries" title="Stefan Leuker, Head of Maintenance at Aviko, overseeing the operation of Ishida multihead weighers to ensure the efficient and high-speed production of French fries

The machines weigh the frozen potato products for packaging in bags with fill weights from 450g to 2.5kg. This means that the weigher/bagmaker systems are fully utilised and run in 24/7 operation.

Stefan Leuker, Head of Maintenance at Aviko:

"To increase output, we began gradually replacing the existing multihead weighers with new machines in 2023."

Output boosted by 40%

The newly installed multihead weighers from the CCW-RV series have significantly increased performance at Aviko. When filling French fries into 450g bags, the manufacturer can run up to 70 packs per minute (ppm) instead of 50 ppm with the previous models. Five-stage digital filtering of the weighing signal shortens the settling time of the hoppers so that a maximum number of them can be used for the next calculation.

The high-speed operation is by no means at the expense of weighing accuracy: According to Stefan Leuker, a 2.5kg bag is only overfilled by 5g. To put this into perspective: this value corresponds roughly to the weight of a single frozen chip.

Aviko’s new multihead weighers feature Anti-Floor-Vibration technology, maintaining weighing accuracy even in a high-vibration environment

Unshakeable

The new multihead weighers from Ishida are not only fast and accurate, but also extremely robust.Stefan Leuker:

"Unlike our old weighers, vibrations from the production environment do impact on weighing accuracy."

The CCW-RV series features Ishida's proprietary Anti-Floor-Vibration (AFV) System. To protect the loadcells, this technology compensates for any external vibrations to maintain the highest weighing accuracy. 

High availability

Aviko also benefits from rapid product changeovers, taking place several times a week using presets. Settings for new products can be configured conveniently using the automatic set-up function. Even the fortnightly wet cleaning process causes only minimal downtime.

Energy-efficient CCW-RV weighers from Ishida help reduce power consumption by up to 50%, making the production process more sustainable

Energy-saving weighers

The CCW-RV weighers also stand out due to their very low energy consumption. At full capacity, the machines consume around 20% less power than conventional multihead weighers. Economical operating modes "Half Power" and "Eco Mode" can be selected, further reducing consumption by up to 50%.

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