LENEXA, KANSAS – Pilgrim’s Pride, Lufkin, Texas purchased Marel’s new Tray Packing System at the end of October 2002. The Marel Tray Packing System enables poultry processors to create automatically uniform and accurate scannable unit weight batches of product, like those scheduled to be sold in the retail market next year. The system intelligently minimizes overpack, handles bone-in and boneless products, and allows for the packing of both premium and family packs, separately or simultaneously.

The Pilgrim’s Pride system will include Marel’s new patent-pending option of weighing in the bin. Each collecting bin on the Marel CheckBin grader includes a precision scale that will feed back the actual weight in the bin to the main weight grader computer. The computer adjusts the accumulated piece weight accordingly, eliminating accumulation error.

Weighing in the bins is especially important when a processor batches injected products, as some of the moisture can dissipate while the pieces sit in the batching bin.

“The system that will be installed at the Pilgrim’s Pride in the Lufkin, Texas, plant will be the most advanced of its kind,” explains Simon Langhorn, of the Marel USA poultry sales group. “At Marel we are looking forward to working with Pilgrim’s Pride and making this installation the first of many successful projects with them.”

Pilgrim’s Pride is the second-largest poultry-processing company in the US and employs 24,500 people. Dan Emery, Vice President of Marketing, said, “This is another example of how Pilgrim’s Pride continues to be an innovator in the food business. We secure the most up-to-date technology to offer our customers the most up-to-date products. We selected Marel after looking at all the options. Marel offered accuracy, durability and was cost-effective.” Current plans call for installation of the Marel systems in the spring of 2003.

Visit Pilgrim’s Pride on the web at www.pilgrimspride.com