Wednesday, August 25th, 2010
I subscribe to a number of food industry newsletters because I edit a monthly digest of farm and food news stories for the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group. One of the weekly newsletters I receive is about new equipment and supplies for industrial meat processors. This week’s hot topic is automated smoke stick loading robotics and a robot called the AST 340 that replaces two humans per shift — that’s as many as six people a day out of a job so we can have cheaper Slim Jims. And we thought all the jobs were going overseas!
According to the newsletter:
Handtmann has introduced the Automatic Smoke stick Transfer unit, model AST 340, that replaces up to two workers per shift. The high volume, higher reliability AST 340 automatically deposits smoke sticks and loads sausage loops into smoke house trolleys, complementing Handtmann’s integrated smoked sausage solution that begins with the Handtmann VF 600 vacuum filler and Handtmann’s PVLH 241 Automatic Linking line.
Traditional sausage linking/hanging lines require at least three operators to handle the machinery, tie off the casing ends, and load the smoke house trolleys. According to Handtmann, the new AST 340 robotics automatically load up to six sticks per minute.
Another machine that caught my attention uses “super-sized sausage suspension technology.” I have a keen interest in super-sized sausages. The SwiStickXXL, pictured here, suspends sausages in neat rows like a cannibal’s collection of shrunken heads. I don’t know whether to park it in the kitchen or the bedroom.
Tags: Food, industrial meat processing, sausage, Sustainability