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The Tönnies Group has constructed its bovine animal competence center in Badbergen, Lower Saxony. The cuts of beef are vacuum-packed in thermoforming and shrink-wrap machines, a process that has turn out to be extra environment friendly than ever following renovations on the site: Now, energy-saving Atlas Copco variable-speed vacuum pumps are used to create vacuum situations at two central stations.What used to be a blended slaughterhouse has become a “bovine animal competence center”: For a long time, cattle and pigs had been slaughtered and butchered at the similar time in Badbergen on behalf of different corporations. In 2017, the Tönnies Group took over the positioning and determined to base its whole slaughtering operation in Badbergen – up until that point, this had taken place at the company’s major site in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. In 2020, Tönnies Beef reopened the site after intensive conversion and renovation. The Group invested round eighty five million euro within the constructing and state-of-the-art expertise at this website in a small city in northern Lower Saxony, between Oldenburg and Osnabrück. The slaughtering, butchering and finishing processes are based mostly on the most recent cooling technology, machine-based butchering and extremely automated selecting and transport lines.
Several hundred tons of meat go away the site daily and 95% of the animal – practically everything – is utilized. This allows Tönnies to satisfy different eating habits all over the world: While German customers prefer lean beef, meat with a thick layer of fats is well-liked in Scandinavia and different European nations, in accordance with the manufacturer’s website.
Efficient screw vacuum pumps present forming, low and fine vacuums
“The cuts weigh between 1.5 and 9 kilograms after butchering,” explains Waldemar Metzger, Technical Manager of Tönnies Beef GmbH & Co. KG in Badbergen. The cuts are vacuum-packed for varied main clients. For this objective, Tönnies has installed a number of packaging lines in the halls: Seven thermoforming curler machines and two robot-operated shrink-wrap packaging machines. Efficient Atlas Copco vacuum pumps are used in the systems to hoover pack the tubular/shrink baggage and thermoformed plastic trays, and to maintain the meat actually recent. They work in two stations and supply forming, low and fantastic vacuums.
The thermoforming machines supplied by vacuum station 1. There are four Atlas Copco GHS 585 VSD+ variable-speed, oil-injected screw vacuum pumps that evacuate the air up to 40 mbar (absolute), in addition to 4 small boosters that decrease the pressure even further to 3 mbar. One of the screw pumps provides the forming vacuum for the thermoforming roller machines, which only require round 100 to one hundred fifty mbar for the forming process. The other vacuum pumps in this station are related to the boosters. One of the pumps is redundant at any given time: This is also the case within the second vacuum station, which contains five GHS 730 VSD+ pumps that take away the air from the shrink luggage on the Cryovac lines. “ เกจ์วัดความดัน of the cuts of meat is routinely detected by our systems,” explains Waldemar Metzger. “The packaging machines then mechanically insert the cuts of meat into the tubular baggage, that are minimize to the right dimension beneath a vacuum bell.” Under the hood, all ambient air is then evacuated in two phases till the stress is around three mbar (fine vacuum).
“With the forming vacuum – or thermoforming vacuum, as it’s additionally known as – the plastic tray is fashioned by slicing the foil roll,” says the Technical Manager. After filling the shell with smaller pieces of meat, the shell is “wed” to the quilt film: The software closes and seals the packaging hermetic at three to five mbar using the nice vacuum. Sorting machines assign the person trays and tubular baggage to bigger packing containers, that are then used to choose customized boxes for customer orders.
Efficient speed regulation reduces vitality necessities by a third or more
Waldemar Metzger has been working in Badbergen for 20 years and has been part of the planning and execution phases of converting the blended slaughterhouse to a purely beef operation from the very beginning. This included the decision to purchase Atlas Copco variable-speed vacuum pumps. “As far as expertise is anxious, having the power to vary the pace of the GHS vacuum pumps is important to us and saves power,” stresses the Tönnies worker. “Compared to fixed-speed machines, you presumably can reliably reduce down energy requirements by round a 3rd – perhaps even by half, relying on the diversity issue.”
The controls on the vacuum pumps have a user-friendly plain textual content display, which additionally signifies the running hours and upkeep intervals. Since the Atlas Copco pumps could be connected on to an exhaust system, it was potential to make use of air-cooled pumps. According to the producer, this improves the climate of the room; it is no longer essential to have the extra room cooling usually required when using central vacuum systems.
The venture was carried out on site by and with Oliver Hornberg, Managing Director of Eugen Theis Vakuumtechnik in Werther. He delivered the pumps to Tönnies Beef, prepared to make use of – including a 400 m pipeline in the converted slaughterhouse, measuring in locations to a diameter of DN 300. His firm, Eugen Theis GmbH, was based in 1984 and specializes in vacuum expertise. In 1999, Hornberg took over the enterprise from its founder, Eugen Theis, and 20 years later, in late 2021, bought it to Atlas Copco after he couldn’t discover a successor. “Our two youngsters are pursuing different career paths,” he says. Hornberg himself stays Managing Director even after the company was bought to Atlas Copco and is trying forward to significant development underneath the umbrella of one of the world’s largest suppliers of vacuum pumps. The firm already operates all through Germany: “From Flensburg in the north to Regensburg in the south and Halle (Saale) in the east,” he says, outlining the attain of his firm: This also contains Badbergen in the (north)west, as he sometimes stops by at Tönnies Beef to keep up the machines.
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