Nestled within the idyllic Lüneburger Heath area, Germany, lies a company with international operations: Valenzi has been processing mushrooms and forest fruits to produce preserves and frozen products since 1954. Valenzi ensures product quality with GARVENS checkweighers.Soup ingredients, mushrooms, meat dumplings and berries are key areas of production at Valenzi. Valenzi sells its products throughout the world and meets the strictest quality demands. Only top grade aromatic products can meet the company's own high standards.
"Quality is a vital success factor in our company", explains Mathias Koeppen, CEO at Valenzi. "Strict quality demands govern the entire production process". Many of the raw ingredients the company uses grow in the wild. As soon as they arrive, trained staff assesses their quality and the ones that pass the tests are then forwarded for ISO-certified processing.
The mushrooms and forest fruits, which are gathered by hand in their country of origin, are washed, desalinated, hand sorted and checked for foreign bodies such as metal particles prior to filling." We produce in compliance with the IFS (International Food Standard) and place great emphasis on employing the latest technology and intelligent production machines", adds Mathias Koeppen. To perform the legally required weight checks, the company relies on the inline checkweighing technology of Mettler-Toledo Garvens.After filling the Shiitake mushrooms into jars, the correct weight of the jars is then checked in the production line by an in-line XS3 checkweigher.
With its touchscreen display, the calibrated checkweigher is easy to use, and its flexible modular structure allows it to be integrated into existing production lines. Valenzi uses the checkweigher to check up to four different products ranging from 120 to 900 grams. The calibrated checkweigher inspects up to 140 jars per minute and guarantees accuracy of up to 1 gram. Before the jars reach the XS3, they are aligned and fed securely to the checkweigher by two laterally adjustable side-grip belts.
Jars that are too light or too heavy are gently rejected with the help of a product divider system that uses a GARVENS line divider.Valenzi also relies on Mettler-Toledo Garvens technology to inspect its tin line. Up to 100 tins of chantarelles are weighed per minute. The S3 dynamic checkweigher offers an adjustable belt speed and can therefore easily and automatically adapt to the requirements of any production process. The S3 is also used in conjunction with side-grip belts to offer optimum feed of the cans onto the weighing belt.
Furthermore, the S3 can be extended at any time and be upgraded, for example, with an automatic feedback control for opti¬mising fill processes – just like its modern equivalent now called the XS3.