Produce packaging advances

With ever-changing industry regulations on food safety and labor, the processes and equipment used for washing, grading, and packaging produce are constantly evolving, giving growers new equipment options each year, while challenging equipment suppliers to continue to improve on their processes and equipment solutions as a whole. Presented here are some of those options.
 

Versatile sizers.

The EXR Sizer was introduced in 1984 by Lakewood Process Machinery and was originally designed and built for sizing onions. Today, the EXR has a feature-rich design that offers tool-free size adjustability, allowing growers to size multiple products with multiple size specifications on a single machine with independently adjusted hand-crank size gaps. Each sizer is built to order from a list of the packer’s size range requirements, and includes customer-specific, custom-length conveyors that bring the grower’s sized product to another station in the packing line, or to a scale for filling. The EXR sizes anywhere from 3 to 10 different sizes, each size gently dropping to its own exit conveyor.
 

Automated filling systems.

The “SP” series of single head can be placed at the end of a packing line for fast and accurate box filling or can be used as a single stand-alone unit. Growers that require a higher-volume box filling solution have a number of larger automated box filling options. Clamshell fillers are available in simple, manually operated push-through fillers, high-speed volumetric fillers. They’re also available in extremely sophisticated fill-by-weight clamshell filling systems, which offer growers the peace of mind that almost no product is going to waste in the filling process, and that their container weights will meet the requirements of their marketer.
 

Customizations.

For growers with special packing needs and unusual product, Lakewood will go through a thorough testing process with the grower’s product samples to evaluate whether customizations or design work is needed. The company recently entered the electronic sorting and packing industry through its relationship with Sermac S.r.l. in Milan, Italy. Se.mac products will be sold and serviced through Lakewood’s sister company, Sort-Pack Integrated Systems, with plans in place to manufacture Se.mac’s electronic sorting equipment during 2014.

Source: Lakewood Process Machinery, www.lakewoodpm.com, which includes among its customers, Houweling’s (Camarillo, Calif.) – fill-by-weight clamshell filler for tomatoes) and Lakeside Produce (Le Leamington, Ont. Canada) – Full packing line (multisizer, brush washer, roller inspection and conveyors).