World's largest plant for the production of fat balls

Downlaod: World's largest plant for the production of fat balls (.pdf file)
During spring 2007, ideas were formulated and a project was designed to expand VPG's production facilities for fat balls. Prior to expansion, the company was producing fat balls and other wild bird products in two wholly owned plants and a 50/50 owned plant in Denmark. With the strong growth in the fat ball segment, it was decided to plan for a new facility that could match the growing demand for fat balls in Europe. The plan materialized between June and August and the factory is now producing
50 000 to 60 000 fat balls per hour - 24 hours a day in the high season. The new plant is fully computerised, meaning that no products are handled manually, from dosage of the raw materials to the finished goods packed on pallets and placed in the warehouse. The plant consists of a computerised material handling system including powder mills,
a rolling mill and micro dosage unit for additives. After passing through pre-mixers and cooling mixers, the fat balls are formed in eight high-speed presses in four different and separate lines, which deliver the balls directly to the freezer. After freezing, the balls are able to pass through the packaging process without being deformed or squeezed. The packaging process starts with netting of the balls.
The new plant
Following the netting process, the balls are transported and routed in a flexible distribution system to the relevant packaging line, whether this be bags, flow-packs, buckets or directly into boxes. The automatic cartoning machines place the sales units in all kinds of boxes or in 1/2 - or 1/4 -pallet display cartons. All boxes including the display cartons are placed by robots on Euro pallets or UK pallets and guided through the automatic wrapping and marking system, ending up in the warehouse ready for just-in-time delivery or warehousing. The system is divided into four separate lines, allowing VPG to produce four different recipes at the same time, with a capacity per line of 16 800 balls per hour. The estimated capacity on a daily basis is 250 000 balls per line per day and altogether up to 1 mio balls per day. The four separate lines can be routed to all the different packaging lines via a flexible distribution system with programmed priorities.
The packaging line capacity is:
• Flow-pack: 50 000 - 60 000 balls per hour dependent on sales unit (four, six, eight pieces etc.);
• Bucket line: 35 000 balls per hour dependent on bucket size…