Case: seed packing at Red River – Van Eck

Moving to new premises or renovating your building are the perfect time to review and optimize your packaging processes. This is exactly what poppy seed specialist Red River – Van Eck did – with a little help from us. We provided a brand new fully automated packaging line to pack their seeds.

Red River – Van Eck is based in Etten-Leur, the Netherlands, and specializes in sourcing, processing and distributing seeds, in particular poppy seeds, spice and baking industries. The company has more than 135 years of experience in this profession.

In 2019, they started building a completely new production line, fitted with the latest equipment for cleaning, screening, processing and packaging the seeds. Red River – Van Eck had known us for a number of years from various trade fairs, and were pleased to engage us for a complete packaging line for their poppy seeds. The seed had to be packaged in various quantities, ranging from 10 to 25 kg, in open mouth paper bags and big bags.

The challenges of poppy seed packaging

Building a packaging plant for a factory that is still under construction is an entirely different matter than constructing a plant in an existing building. Everything was drawn in 3D and the preparations were made mainly on paper, as it was not possible to measure anything on site.

If machines are being used for food products, it is crucial that no product can be left in the machines and that everything can be inspected quickly. When working with ultra-fine raw materials, such as poppy seeds, it is important to pay extra attention to this.

The Ausloos approach

Together, we chose an open-mouth bagging installation and a big bag station, both of which are fully automatic. The poppy seed is weighed, packed in the correct bag, checked for metal and weight, and faulty bags are automatically removed from the system. The right bags are labelled and automatically stacked on pallets, ready for transport.

To ensure that no poppy seed can remain in the installation, it was meticulously polished inside and every last corner was finished down to the last detail. The line is made of stainless steel, that is as smooth as glass so that the poppy seed can move along it smoothly.

To keep operation and maintenance as easy as possible, every part of the machine is easy to access and open up for inspection.

Do you want to package seeds efficiently?

For seed packing we can provide a suitable installation that meets all requirements and packs your seeds efficiently and to high standards. Are you looking for a customized solution your company? Let us know, and we will be happy to think along with you.

Machines used in this installation

• Technipes net weight bagging machine with gravity dosing
• Inline metal detector
• Technipes big bag station
• Technipes Futura automatic bagging system for open-mouth bags
• Mesutronic metal detector for checking full bags
• OCS checkweigher
• Altech labeller to attach labels to the filled bags
• Winner 400 Robot Palletizer with pallet transport