Project: Special Dog, Brazil

Special Dog Company, considered one of the Brazilian leaders in dry food for dogs and cats, decided to enter the wet pet food market in 2019. The state-of-the-art 5,000 m2 factory of Special Dog in Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo (SP) has space for a production capacity of 600tons per month. Automation was necessary for the reliable production of six lines and a total of 30 different products.

The challenge was to finetune all parties involved, so handling costs per product could be reduced to a minimum. After contact with Stipare (a local integrator of various brands involved in the global wet pet food market), the trust was gained to step into an automated pouch handling system.

Our solution consists of a Loader and Unloader with a unique in-line drying system. In short, when the products come out of the filler, they arrive at Lan’s loading area, a pouch pattern is formed and they are being loaded in to the retort tray.  These trays are designed that an optimum number of pouches will fit in, and thus the retort will be loaded most efficient. By doing so, the energy consumption per product is being kept to minimum. After the retort process, the pouches arrive at the unloader from Lan, where they will be picked out of the tray and dried in-line. This unique drying solution reduces the wet area in a factory and allows the pouches to directly go to the packaging machine.

Future proof 

Thanks to the different layout options, fillers, retorts, packaging and end-of-line equipment can be added. To complete a 100% automation, it is even possible to add a Lan shuttle system, so the loading and unloading of the retorts will be automated as well. This enables that the entire line can be operated by three persons only: one at the loader area, one at the shuttle area and one person at the unloader/ packaging area.

For this project, Special Dog Company selected A-quality technology brands. Multipond (multihead weigher), Toyo & Jidoki (Pouch Filler Machine), Engilico (seal Inspection system), Loma (X-ray + Check-Weigher) Lan Handling (Loader, Shuttle, Unloader and as a second step Palletization), Steriflow (Autoclave to Sterilization) and Somic (Case Packer).

Balance

The difficulty in this is to balance the line speeds within all equipment, so working together like an orchestra. After more than a year of production, Special Dog benefits from total flexibility within the production line and the smooth interface is guaranteed.