When Masters of Their Craft Join Forces.
When production capacities at Atria, one of Denmark’s leading food companies, began to reach their limits, the traditional company turned to an equally leading system supplier for slicing and packaging lines: Weber Food Technology. Together, the two masters of their craft created a solution that demonstrates true expertise on more than one level.
“Good Food – better mood” is the slogan of the Danish food company Atria, perfectly summarizing its ambition to be the Danes’ preferred choice when it comes to meat products for their Smørrebrød. For more than 75 years, Atria has been producing cold cuts, pepperoni, sausages, and bacon for the Danish and British markets – with great success. So successful, in fact, that the company recently began to face capacity constraints: “Our biggest challenge was our production capacity“, explains Jan Kokborg, Technical Director at Atria, „We did not have sufficient runtime and output volumes on our existing lines.“ Even operating several lines and working overtime could not solve the problem. At the same time, there was no physical space available in the production hall for additional equipment. The solution, therefore, was clear: a significant increase in production efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Atria had very specific ideas about how these goals should be achieved. In addition to a substantial increase in output performance, the number of production lines was to be reduced wherever possible in order to free up valuable space in the production hall. Together with a higher level of automation, this would also allow personnel savings. With regard to resources and raw materials, Atria aimed to maximize product yield and, in particular, reduce the amount of plastic used in packaging. Finally, the solution needed to be flexible enough to be easily adapted to future requirements. For the development of such a line concept, Atria needed a partner with just as much expertise in line and automation solutions for the food industry as Atria has in understanding Danish sausage preferences.
Two Partners, One Goal: Customer Satisfaction.
With Weber Food Technology, Atria found this partner—and, moreover, one that, like Atria itself, is committed not only to understanding customers, but to satisfying them completely. “Listening carefully to our customers, understanding them and finding new and even better solutions together: this is our claim, which obliges all our employees and drives them to achieve top performance again and again,” says Tobias Weber, CEO of Weber Food Technology, describing Weber’s typical approach to collaboration. The close cooperation between Atria and Weber proves that he means what he says: the partners took around two years to evaluate Atria’s production processes, capture all requirements, and understand the individual challenges in order to find the best line setup. “We showed Weber which products we manufacture on the line, we discussed which packs should be produced on the line and how to implement this most efficiently,” recalls Jan Kokborg. Ole Balzer, Managing Director of Weber in Denmark, adds: “Because Atria processes natural products, whose irregular shape and length pose particular challenges for automated processing, Atria products were also tested on Weber lines in Germany as part of the project planning.” Only once the experts from both companies were convinced they had designed the best solution—one that also gets the maximum out of valuable natural products—was the planning finalized and the project implemented.
Maximum Value Creation Along the Entire Line.
The Weber solution for Atria starts with a weSCAN laser scanner and a weSLICE 9500 slicer including vario technology. This combination is a real game changer for Atria. These two line modules provide the foundation that enables Atria to process its broad product range on just one line—regardless of whether the products are uniform calibrated goods or irregular natural products. “The weSCAN recognizes the shape and weight of a product and transmits this data to the slicer,” explains Ole Balzer from Weber. “This enables the weSLICE to precisely slice each portion of each individually procured product—with the right number of slices, the right slice thickness, the right weight, and the right quality.” As a result, Atria can not only maximize product yield and minimize give-away, which increases production value creation, but also becomes significantly more flexible. Thus, the company can react immediately to product trends or seasonal requirements using its existing equipment and is already prepared today for requirements that new, future cold-cut ideas may place on production.
This future-proofing is also supported by Weber’s pick robot, which connects to the slicer as an automation component. “Atria placed particular emphasis on the picker’s flexibility,” Balzer recalls. “The customer knows their current requirements, but not what they will need in the future.” That is why the partners decided on a triple picker. The Weber wePICK places sliced products and pieces into the package at speeds of up to 150 picks per minute. In the triple version, it offers Atria not only high output, but also added flexibility—for example, the option to rotate sliced portions by 90 degrees before placing them into the package.
A Holistic Solution of Hardware and Digital Products.
And by integrating the wePACK 7000 thermoforming packaging machine, Weber was also able to meet another of Atria’s wishes: packaging at the highest performance levels while producing more sustainably. “We needed a new packaging solution to achieve a better price on the market and, at the same time, to reduce plastic consumption for sustainability reasons,” says Lise Østergaard, Managing Director of Atria in Denmark. Because the wePACK 7000 can also process sustainable, resource-saving materials such as mono film and paper-based film, Atria is now reducing plastics in the packaging of its cold-cut specialties. This was received so positively at Atria that, during the joint development of the line solution, a new sustainable package for the Danish market was developed—and the packaging machine on another existing line in Atria’s production hall was replaced with a new wePACK 7000. “We are a traditional company,” emphasizes Lise Østergaard, “but we, too, have to keep up with the times and constantly look for opportunities to improve and increase efficiency.”
In order to meet these requirements and leverage all available potential, the comprehensive solution package used at Atria includes not only innovative hardware but also digital products. Weber OneControl technology, for example, enables Kokborg and his team to keep the entire line in view and operate it from any operator terminal on the line. In addition, Atria uses the Weber FactoryCockpit and Durablade®Care. The FactoryCockpit acts as a command center and provides all information such as production data, analyses, and reports in real time, around the clock. At the heart of the cockpit is a well-structured dashboard that displays the live status and all relevant performance and quality data for each line at a glance—from give-away and yield to ok production and packages per batch, including uptime and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). This enables Atria’s production managers to review the current production situation at any time and react quickly to deviations. With the digital blade management system Durablade®Care, Atria is also able to use its Weber Durablade slicer blades in the best possible way—tailored to product and application, saving costs and increasing the efficiency of its production lines.
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