The company installed the equipment at its plant in Svenstrup near Aalborg, which produces 90 tons of sausages each day.
Tulip noted that large proportion of these - about 60 tons a day - is packaged under a modified atmosphere of carbon dioxide and nitrogen to keep the product fresh and improve its shelf-life. This Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) is carried out on 20 packaging lines.
The new equipment was installed after the company realized that existing gas flushing system was not efficient as significant quantities of gas were being wasted. In addition, manual samples are taken at frequent intervals to ensure that the correct mixture is being introduced into the packages, which incurred labour costs and involved time delay.
Eight new pieces of equipment were installed on four of the packaging lines. These are MAP Check 3 gas analyzer and MAP Mix Provectus gas mixer, which in tandem provide constant monitoring of the gas content and automatic adjustment of the gas flow for an improved quality and reduced cost of operation
In addition, the analyzer and gas mixer offers an option to log quality assurance data on each packaging line, data such as the gas content and the gas consumption. Other MAP critical data can be stored in the units or a central database.
Tulip engineer Thomas Jensen said that with the installation the company has lowered gas consumption on these four lines by 30% to 40%, which results in a direct saving of money, and was able to reduce its manual sampling by 50%.
The system also offers automatic data logging, which makes it possible to go into the system and find where the problem occurred and how many packages may have been affected, which is important if the company gets a query from a customer.
Tulip expects to get a return back on the investment within only a few years and introduce the system to further lines in the future.
Tulip supplies processed food such as sausages, bacon, soups, sliced meat for the domestic and export market.
