Şenpiliç is a major poultry processor in Turkey, producing for the national and export market. To be able to ship the wide variety of processed chicken products to the right customers, the company's new greenfield plant requires some pretty complex logistics. That is why Marel Poultry is Şenpiliç’s choice when it comes to keeping control of all packing, batching and labeling operations.
For Şenpiliç’s new high-capacity poultry processing plant, it was a main concern to lay out a clear end-of-line logistics plan, allowing the handling of a multitude of end products. Nine Marel Weigh Price Labelers in total are in charge of this job now, all controlled by Innova software.
Keep the overview
The quantity and variation of products Şenpiliç has to dispatch at the end of the process line is quite extensive. To keep a clear overview of all these product flows in the company's plant, plant management needed professional support from a supplier that knows what Şenpiliç needs. Marel is such a partner. Şenpiliç is very pleased with the solutions Marel offered and particularly with the way Innova software keeps control of everything. It connects every step of the packing process and ensures precise order fulfillment.
Giblets packed by MHW
Giblets are interesting products for the Turkish retail market. Many Turkish supermarkets will have them packed in trays in their shelves. Şenpiliç and Marel Poultry have found a flexible solution to create such trays: two Marel MultiHead Weighers. One of them is weighing and batching gizzards, the other one does the same with hearts and livers. The products are allocated to one of the 14 pockets and each pocket gathers the contents for one tray until the target weight has been reached. After that, the fixed-weight batch is released to a tray, which is aligned on a conveyor belt underneath the MHW.
Pack, then batch
For the cut-up chicken pieces, Şenpiliç applies a different approach of batching and packing. The company has implemented two high-speed SmartLine Graders to grade their bone-in thighs and drumsticks. These leg pieces are the only products to be graded and batched automatically to compose
fixed-weight trays.
All other cut-up pieces such as wings and fillets are packed manually to compose catch-weight trays, while whole birds are packed into individual bags. Concerning these products, Şenpiliç decided to batch them after packing. That’s because the company uses the weighing function of its nine Weigh Price Labelers as a basis for batching operations downstream.
Nine WPLs
Şenpiliç’s tray-packed wings, drumsticks, thighs and fillets are sent to five Weigh Price Labelers. While being weighed and labeled in the WPLs, trays have their information sent to Innova. Now, Innova can decide how and when the downstream Marel TrayGrader packing stations will unload each tray to its right location. On the five TrayGraders, the total target weight of every box to be composed is calculated accurately.
Three more Marel Weigh Price Labelers are implemented to label and weigh bagged whole birds, fresh and frozen. All cut-up pieces, which are destined for bulk sale, are conveyed to a ninth Weigh Price Labeler.
BoxGraders
Now that all products have been boxed, the process shifts from catch-weight trays to fixed-weight boxes. This is needed for the final packing stage, where a large Marel BoxGrader takes care of grading, sorting and diverting of boxes. Innova grading software allocates the 8 to 12 kilo boxes to a predefined location. In this case, the boxes are unloaded from the main conveyor to one of the 24 roller belts. According to purchase orders, boxes are collected to compose a pallet, ready to be shipped directly to customers with Şenpiliç’s large freight truck fleet.
