Bakery automates wrapping to meet market demands

Established in 1954, Schwob’s Swiss Bakery is one of Melbourne’s oldest artisan bread bakers.

To capitalise on a major expansion in its core wholesale market, which includes supermarkets, the food service sector and independent retailers, Schwob’s accelerated production and automated its packaging process with the installation of a PFM Hurricane Servo flow-wrapper from Emrich Packaging Machinery.

The high-speed Hurricane servo-controlled horizontal flow-wrapper can achieve a maximum speed of 100 mechanical cycles/min. Crucially for Schwob’s, the Hurricane allows for a rapid product changeover time of just 3 min, assisted by 24 pre-programmed set-ups. This adaptability means the machine can be rapidly changed from wrapping a large bread loaf to an individual roll.

The wrapper produces packs that are sealed lengthwise and crosswise on three sides from a roll of heat-sealable packaging film, with or without support trays. It also provides features such as no product-no bag and misplaced product detection, eliminating film wastage and product damage.

Schwob’s Director John Inman also praises the reliability and robustness of the wrapper, qualities that he says are vital to enable the bakery to meet market demands for fresh products.