Before the sugar makes it to the packaging stage, however, there is still a fair bit of processing to be done.
“We get all of our processed sugars from South Americas shipped to us in one-metric-tonne tote bags,” Provenzano explains. “At this point the sugar is solid as a rock, so it needs to be further processed into a free-flowing state.”
After the bulk sugar is broken down, it is transferred to the awaiting packaging lines for bagging.
The plant’s busy two- and four-kilo packaging lines use high-precision weighing and dispensing equipment to fill all the bags with pre-determined weight, after which the bags are securely sealed with an ITW Dynatec Dynamini gluer.
After that, the filled bags are conveyed past a the Domino C1000 high-resolution, large-character inkjet printer that uses Piezo technology to print barcodes, text and graphics, even on porous substrates.
Once all the important lot code and packaging date information has been applied to the top of the each package, they are transferred for final quality control inspection administered by one of six recently-installed Phantom metal detection systems—manufactured by the Toronto-based Fortress Technology Inc.—which Sweet Source purchased from the Richmond Hill, Ont.-based packaging equipment distributor C.W. Downer & Co. about four months ago.
According to Provenzano, most of the company’s existing packaging machinery was in fact purchased through C.W. Downer & Co., based on the expert advice offered by Downer staff, the high reliability and performance of the company’s automated equipment offerings, and superior customer service and follow-up.
Downer sales representative Dave Pshebnicki explains that the large-aperture Fortress Big Bag King metal detection system—designed specifically for detecting metal particles in larger packages of free-flowing products such as sugar, flour, grain, spices, powders and food additives—utilizes the most advanced digital signal processing technology developed to date to easily detect stainless-steel objects as small as 2.0-mm in 50- to 100-pound bags of dry goods.
“In the world of metal detection,” explains Pshebnicki, “the larger the aperture, the less sensitivity there is.
“But thanks to a specialized design, the Big Bag King is able to overcome this deficiency and provide very sensitive readings,” Pshebnicki says, adding it can also detect ferrous and non-ferrous metals as small as 1.5-mm, while its built-in noise reduction features significantly reduce any radio frequency interference that can result in false positive readings.
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