A special 14 head salad version of Ishida’s newest R Series multihead weigher has helped to increase production at Vega Mayor S.A. in Navarre, Spain, part of the Florette group, a leading supplier of fruit and vegetables with 15% of the European supermarket sector.

R-Series weighers benefit from major technical advances at Ishida, which have increased speed and accuracy. However, for salad packers the main attraction of the new range is the powerful feeder vibration system, which uses Ishida PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) technology. The combination of this system and special C4 contact materials are key factors in keeping difficult salads moving.

“Our type of product needs a lot of vibration to keep it moving,” confirms Luis M. López, Industrial Development Director. “The new Ishida offers greater amplitude and better control of the vibration timing , and indeed tunes itself to give the optimum result. This helps to speed up production, and also means that labour is saved because there is less need to keep checking product flow.

“A major point for me is that, in the R-Series, Ishida have developed a new way of attaching the vibrating parts to the machine body. Even after less than a year, it is clear that this leads to much less wear, and therefore to less maintenance. In this business, where freshness and delivery times are so important, downtime has to be kept to an absolute minimum.”