Case-ready Whole Muscle Steak Line

Our solution for portioning and packing whole muscle steak has a number of configurations to suit your production requirements and through put.

Portioning and manual packing

This case ready line with an I-Cut 55 PortionCutter and a manual packing table is ideal for companies with small to medium production lots requiring frequent product type changeover or many Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) per shift.

It suits any kind of tray styling method, from simple to complex styling patterns: shingled slices, flat styling, head-to-tail styling, butterfly or fishbone styling patters. The system is also suitable for decorative packing style, such as; edge peppering or for packing additional decorative items or cooking additives in pack. It caters for both catch weight or fixed weight packing.

The line is designed for cutting and packing boneless meat, by using the Marel I-Cut 55 PortionCutter for slicing the meat primal into a customized and preprogrammed slice weight or thickness.

This line has six packing stations with tables and scales. An operator counts the portions, makes the batches and styles them into trays. The trays are weighed on a scale and when the pack weight is within limits the operators place the ready trays onto a tray conveyor for subsequent tray sealing and dispatch.

Portioning and semi-automatic packing

For simple styling patterns, such as flat packing, shingled style or upright styling and is well suited for medium to high volume dedicated production of few or single stock keeping units (SKUs) per day.

This case-ready packing line features efficient automatic vision-controlled portioning, and semi-automatic packing of sliced meat into fixed weight packs.

The Marel I-Cut 55 portioning machine (or other Marel portioning machine) is used together with a manual pace packing line.

The portioning machine cuts the meat primal into a desired preprogrammed slice weight. The cut slices are conveyed onto a pace packing line placed immediately after the portion cutter.

Trays are automatically de-nested onto a tray conveyor at conform speed with the slices from the portion cutter. One operator counts the slices into batches, as well as removes any trim and off-cuts from the slice stream. The next operators take the slices and styles them in the trays.

Completed trays pass through a checkweigher that registers the tray weight, the accumulated lot average weight, the weight deviations and the acceptance rate.

Trays that do not comply with the weight specifications are automatically pushed away from the conveyor to a rework table where an operator will adjust the trays before placing them back into the product stream. Trays that meet specifications will be conveyed to the tray sealer.

Portioning and automatic packing

This highly automated line is suited for high volume production runs that have only one or a few SKUs produced on the line per day.

For portioning, styling and loading of meat slices into pre-formed trays.

The typical applications for this line are shingled slices with a thickness variation from 4 to 30mm – and two to ten slices are batched together in a shingled fashion with slight overlap. 

The system is flexible in scale and can comprise two to four Opticut portioning machines, depending on throughput requirements.

Crust-frozen raw material is loaded into the Opticut portion cutter that slices the meat and stacks the slices into batches. The batches are conveyed to a batch loader that drops the batches onto a batch conveyor, keeping batches fully separated and equally spaced.

Each batch of slices is automatically dropped into a tray. The tray is check weighed for average batch weight and feeds this information back to the Opticut portion cutter, which then automatically adjusts settings accordingly. If the tray is within limits then it is fed directly to the tray sealing machine. Over- and underweight trays are separated for manual rework.

• Automated portioning and flexible manual packing
• High flexibility and quick changeover of primal types, styling requirements or tray size 
• Can handle complex styling patterns 
• Individual portion thickness from 8 mm and up 
• Fixed weight packs with low giveaway (depending on product and operators) 
• Small footprint 
• Connectivity to Marel Innova software solutions
• Accurate fixed weight packing with controlled low giveaway 
• Small footprint 
• Connectivity to Marel’s production management software Innova
• Highly automated portioning and packing 
• Maximum process yield 
• Minimal giveaway with feedback and giveaway control 
• Minimal manual product handling 
• Consistent product presentation 
• Connectivity to Marel Innova Software Solutions

Marel offers a range of service solutions to prevent failures, maximize performance or in case of unexpected breakdowns remote or onsite assistance.

Marel has offices in 30 countries across all regions, and a global network of highly skilled professionals that provide remote as well as onsite service support. We provide quality spare parts and customized service agreements for our customers to ensure optimal performance of Marel equipment.