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The Tönnies Group has built its bovine animal competence heart in Badbergen, Lower Saxony. The cuts of beef are vacuum-packed in thermoforming and shrink-wrap machines, a process that has become extra environment friendly than ever following renovations at the website: Now, energy-saving Atlas Copco variable-speed vacuum pumps are used to create vacuum conditions at two central stations.What used to be a mixed slaughterhouse has turn out to be a “bovine animal competence center”: For decades, cattle and pigs were slaughtered and butchered on the same time in Badbergen on behalf of other firms. In 2017, the Tönnies Group took over the location and decided to base its whole slaughtering operation in Badbergen – up till that time, this had taken place on the company’s main site in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. In 2020, Tönnies Beef reopened the site after intensive conversion and renovation. The Group invested around 85 million euro in the building and state-of-the-art technology at this site in a small city in northern Lower Saxony, between Oldenburg and Osnabrück. The slaughtering, butchering and ending processes are based mostly on the newest cooling expertise, machine-based butchering and highly automated choosing and shipping traces.
Several hundred tons of meat go away the site daily and 95% of the animal – virtually every little thing – is utilized. This allows Tönnies to fulfill completely different eating habits around the globe: While German shoppers choose lean beef, meat with a thick layer of fats is in style in Scandinavia and different European international locations, based on 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 various major customers. For this function, Tönnies has installed a quantity of packaging traces in the halls: Seven thermoforming roller machines and two robot-operated shrink-wrap packaging machines. Efficient Atlas Copco vacuum pumps are used within the techniques to hoover pack the tubular/shrink luggage and thermoformed plastic trays, and to keep the meat actually contemporary. เพรสเชอร์เกจลม work in two stations and supply forming, low and fantastic vacuums.
The thermoforming machines provided by vacuum station 1. There are 4 Atlas Copco GHS 585 VSD+ variable-speed, oil-injected screw vacuum pumps that evacuate the air up to forty mbar (absolute), as well as 4 small boosters that decrease the strain even further to three mbar. One of the screw pumps supplies the forming vacuum for the thermoforming roller machines, which solely require round a hundred to one hundred fifty mbar for the forming course of. The other vacuum pumps in this station are linked 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 5 GHS 730 VSD+ pumps that remove the air from the shrink luggage on the Cryovac traces. “The measurement of the cuts of meat is mechanically detected by our methods,” explains Waldemar Metzger. “The packaging machines then routinely insert the cuts of meat into the tubular baggage, which are reduce to the right dimension beneath a vacuum bell.” Under the hood, all ambient air is then evacuated in two stages till the strain is round 3 mbar (fine vacuum).
“With the forming vacuum – or thermoforming vacuum, as it’s additionally referred to 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 duvet movie: The software closes and seals the packaging airtight at three to five mbar utilizing the fine vacuum. Sorting machines assign the individual trays and tubular luggage to bigger packing containers, that are then used to pick customized boxes for buyer orders.
Efficient speed regulation reduces power requirements by a 3rd 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 mixed slaughterhouse to a purely beef operation from the very starting. This included the choice to buy Atlas Copco variable-speed vacuum pumps. “As far as know-how is worried, with the power to differ the pace of the GHS vacuum pumps is crucial to us and saves energy,” stresses the Tönnies worker. “Compared to fixed-speed machines, you can reliably cut down energy necessities by around a third – perhaps even by half, depending on the variety issue.”
The controls on the vacuum pumps have a user-friendly plain textual content display, which additionally signifies the running hours and maintenance intervals. Since the Atlas Copco pumps can be related on to an exhaust system, it was potential to use air-cooled pumps. According to the manufacturer, this improves the climate of the room; it is not necessary to have the additional room cooling usually required when using central vacuum methods.
The challenge was applied on site by and with Oliver Hornberg, Managing Director of Eugen Theis Vakuumtechnik in Werther. He delivered the pumps to Tönnies Beef, ready to make use of – together with a 400 m pipeline within the converted slaughterhouse, measuring in locations to a diameter of DN 300. His firm, Eugen Theis GmbH, was based in 1984 and focuses on vacuum expertise. In 1999, Hornberg took over the enterprise from its founder, Eugen Theis, and 20 years later, in late 2021, offered it to Atlas Copco after he couldn’t discover a successor. “Our two youngsters are pursuing other profession paths,” he says. Hornberg himself stays Managing Director even after the corporate was sold to Atlas Copco and is trying ahead to significant growth beneath 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 within the south and Halle (Saale) within the east,” he says, outlining the attain of his firm: This additionally includes Badbergen in the (north)west, as he generally stops by at Tönnies Beef to maintain the machines.
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