Nähr-Engel GmbH processes approximately 120,000 tons of fresh potatoes each year, making it one of the leading manufacturers of dehydrated potato products. The company supplies culinary innovations and individual recipe solutions to processing, food service and food retail customers all over the world.

Greifensee, Zurich -- (SBWire) -- 09/09/2010 -- Making what’s good even better

At Nähr-Engel, quality is top priority and the driving force for all business. All 200 employees in Nähr-Engel‘s Goch plant are actively involved in “making what’s good even better,” one of the company’s main philosophies, and quality control processes are well-defined and rigorously implemented. The company extends this focus on quality externally, and selects all suppliers with the utmost care to ensure that all products meet the highest quality standards. For this reason, the company uses product inspection equipment from Mettler Toledo GARVENS.

Completeness checking for customer satisfaction

As part of its quality control processes, Nähr-Engel uses a Mettler Toledo S-Series checkweigher to verify the weight of all products in its various lines of dehydrated potatoes. Its newest equipment purchase is a GARVENS XE3 checkweigher with a DMS weighing cell, which checks whether the packing machine has inserted all three mashed potato sachets into cartons on the mashed potato flakes line. The XE3 checkweigher is the last quality control station at Nähr-Engel and automatically rejects all cartons with missing potato sachets.

This completeness checking is done at a conveyor speed of up to 45 metres per minute, checking up to 100 cartons per minute. The compact checkweigher can rapidly verify the weight of cartons between 100 and 2,000 grams at an accuracy level adequate for checking completeness, in addition to being highly cost-effective. Other notable features include a fully adjustable height setting, a sorting/rejection device that is tailored to product charateristics, and continuously variable conveyor speed control to match the line speed.

“It was not only the high level of cost-effectiveness, but above all the XE3’s simple operation that convinced us. Product changeovers are quick and simple, which saves us time and money,” explained Jörg Martens, who is in charge of packaging at Nähr-Engel. “What’s more, overall we are very satisfied with Mettler Toledo GARVENS’ service,” continued Mr. Martens.

SAFELINE metal detectors ensure potatoes are metal-free

In addition to state-of-the-art weighing technology, Mettler Toledo also offers solutions to check food products for foreign bodies. During production at Nähr-Engel, Mettler Toledo SAFELINE metal detectors verify that the dehydrated potato products are metal-free. As part of Mettler Toledo’s Profile platform of products, this metal detector was designed for simple integration into food production lines and provides reliable metal detection during production.