Retort room automation

Your fully automated retort room

to produce various kinds of food, such as soups, sauces, pasta, rice, ready meals, wet pet food, canned vegetables, meat or seafood. By thermal processing (heating) these products for a product dependent period of time, an optimal shelf life is ensured.

Handling systems

Lan Handling Technologies is specialised in retort room automation, providing retort loading & unloading systems for the handling of pouches, cans, jars, bottles and semi-rigid containers. Depending on your product type, desired automation level and production process, we determine whether a robot solution or linear solution best suits your situation.

In the world of food sterilisation, there are roughly two types of processing techniques: batch sterilisation and continuous sterilisation.

Lan Handling Technologies develops automated systems for batch retorts. As the name suggests, a ‘batch’ of products is loaded in and out of the retort, usually in large baskets (typically can and jars) or a stacks of trays (typically pouches and semi-rigid containers).

In the pursuit of higher efficiency and capacity to meet the increasing demand for food, manufacturers often opt for larger retorts.

That means: per retort several heavy product carriers, such as baskets or stacks of trays have to be loaded and unloaded. What about the workplace safety and ergonomics? There are ways to easily automate this time consuming, labor-intensive and sometimes riskfully task.

Nowadays, there is a critical look at the usefulness of packaging in almost every industry.

Rightly so, because the impact on the climate can be big. At the same time, packaging also ensures food safety, shelf life and robustness. How to make the right choice? Looking at a retort pouch (stand-up, pillow or spout), there might be various benefits for your (food or pharma) sterilisation process in terms of transport costs and design options. But how to deal with variation in product sizes? And drying your pouches? Benefit from our experience as a market leader.

Humans simply love choices. That is why we are increasingly encountering variety packs in the (pet) food industry.

In a variety packaging process, individual products are combined in a secondary packaging. Such as boxes or shrink bundles. Automation is very important for an efficient process with a minimum of labour. Lan Handling Technologies has designed fully automated unloading solutions, resulting in the highest possible uptime for your case packers.