Project: Partner in Pet Food, Czech Republic

Partner in Pet Food (PPF) is an innovative and leading European pet food producer. In order to increase capacity and being less dependent of labour, Partner in Pet Food decided to start automating their production lines.

Designing a compact but highly advanced pouch handling system for their wet pet food production plant in the Czech Republic was challenging, due to the limited space and requested quality control features.

Lan Handling designed and installed a robotic pouch handling system, built in a compact way. This was partly achieved through good cooperation with other equipment suppliers.

Specific pouch supply

The pouches come in from the supply belt seal to the front and gusset to the back. This specific pouch supply requires a different pouch stop mechanism. A stopper, which is more commonly used, would not function well in this particular case. We solved this with a push rather than a stop solution. The pouches are pushed in the right position on the conveyer belt. Once the pouches are in position, they slide from one to the other conveyor belt directly in the correct position for printing.

Quality control features

Lan integrated a printer into the line and designed a flattener that shapes the pouches in the correct form for an imprint. Another quality control feature we added, is a sample pouch conveyer which is controlled from an HMI panel and enables the operator to take random samples. Lastly, in the unloading part of the system, Lan designed a tray turning unit which prevents pouches from being left behind on the trays before these will be stacked for manual transport back to the loader.