ILAPAK’s Delta Flobag offers complete ‘wurst-atility’ when packing non-uniform sausages of different shapes and sizes, whilst the Delta 3000 flow wrapper is the top choice on Europe’s high speed fresh sausage lines.
Sausages are an important part of the culinary culture in almost every country in Europe – Poland, Spain Italy and the UK all have strong sausage-making traditions and Germany alone is home to approximately 1200 different ‘Wurst’ varieties.
In a market of such diversity, when it comes to packaging, equipment has to be flexible, to deal with different shapes, sizes and quantities. Machines must also be extremely hygienic – particularly when packing fresh sausages.
ILAPAK has responded to these market demands with its Delta Flobag HFFS – a flexible solution for packing sausages and other fresh, cured and cooked meat and deli products at mid range speeds in the region of 60 ppm.
The Delta Flobag is the machine of choice for manufacturers looking for a flexible and economical workhorse that can switch between laminate film and Flobag vacuumed flow-pack presentations. Characterised by versatility and rugged, hygienic, full stainless steel construction, this system enables factories to replace their more expensive pre-made bag solutions with lower cost film from a reel.
Available as a top or bottom reel machine, the Delta Flobag is particularly suited to lines running a variety of products, as the machine automatically cuts the pack size to each product’s dimensions. Long dwell sealing guarantees air-tight seals over the product’s shelf life.
Dedicated Delta solutions for high speeds
However, for sausage makers operating dedicated product lines to supply the major supermarkets with large quantities of uniform products, a speedier system might be needed. Here, the Delta 3000 flow wrapper is ILAPAK’s recommended solution.
The Delta 3000 can be equipped with a dedicated feeding system that ILAPAK has engineered specifically for fresh sausage lines. This system safeguards product quality by preventing friction as the sausages move through the line.
“The challenge when running sausages is keeping them together without allowing them to rub against each other. Our engineers have designed a system that transports collations of 7-10 sausages in ‘pockets’ from the extruder directly to the film section of the flow wrapper,” explains Luca Somaini, Delta Product Manager at ILAPAK.
This feeding technique, combined with ‘inverted’ flow wrapper system design, enables operating speeds of up to 130 ppm.
ILAPAK recommends an inverted flow wrapper configuration when products require support through the machine and are difficult to push with the lug chain design found on conventional bottom seal flow wrappers.
“Film is fed from below the product, supporting the sausages as they are carried on the moving film from the former to the cutting head,” explains Somaini.
This hygienic flow wrapper offers complete IP65 protection, enabling full wash down capability – even of the sealing elements. It is equipped with long dwell technology for MAP to cover the widest range of applications and can be easily integrated in automatic packaging systems.
The speed capabilities of the Delta 3000 are more than fast enough for most meat and poultry lines, where upstream butchering and preparation is a limiting factor. However, for highly automated operations, the high performance Delta 6000 has broken new ground in high speed MAP flow wrapping. The horizontal flow wrapper incorporates a new single jaw, long-dwell sealing system for taking meat packing with MAP up to 200ppm.
