News and events

We would like to invite you to the Concetti Headquarter in Bastia Umbra (Perugia), Italy, for the "Pet food open house days", in early September.

We would be please to present our latest packaging machines:

• Complete bagging system based on IPF 40 with two bagging spout and multi-head weigher feeding system for bags from 0,3 to 4,0 Kg with double heatsealing closure systems adjustable in height. Capacity up to 1750 bags/hr
• Complete bagging system based on IGF 1200 with weigher NET/N belt feeding system for bags from 2,0 to 20,0 Kg with double heatsealing closure systems adjustable in height. Capacity up to 900 bags/hr
• Four Column Robot Palletiser featuring a unique side and top layer compacting device. Capacity up to 1800 bags/hr

More information about Pet Food Industry. 

To replace an existing weighing, bagging and palletising system without enlarging or modifying the plant can sometimes be a challenge but it also represents an opportunity for an entrepreneur. Concetti of Bastia, Umbria, Italy recently supplied just such a turnkey solution combining a fully automatic bagging system IGF600 designed for woven PP open mouth bags and a bulk bag filling system to a South American manufacturer of pig and cattle feed.

The customer had requested a high quality bagging solution, robust, reliable and flexible, but adapted to the tight space already available in the plant and capable of filling both 25 kg bags (55lb) and 800-1000 kg (1700-2200lb) bulk bags, required by the local market.

The technical solution offered by Concetti spa has optimized the space, to make the most of the selected machinery, in addition to reducing the capital investment. The installation, for example, uses a single net weigher, meeting the requirement of the customer to have two bagging solutions with a single complete line.

Wheighing: Dosing is by net weight scale NET / N – one for both filling machines - and a conveyor belt. The product is weighed in a separate weigh hopper and is then discharged into the bag, or, alternatively, deposited on a conveyor belt linked to the bulk bag filling station, with multiple weighments making up the 1000Kg load.

Bags: The sacks are filled by a fully automatic IGF 600, specifically designed to handle PE readymade open-mouth bags. Capacity up to 600 bags / hour, depending on the fluidity and type of the product. Concetti supplied the line complete with a PS-3A four-column robot palletiser.

Bulk bags or Fibcs: The big bag filling station has a capacity up to 8-10 big bags per hour and requires the presence of an operator to fit the bag mouth to the bag-spout, close it and remove it with a forklift when filled.

The European dry pet food market is a sophisticated and highly competitive one, with a wide and constantly expanding range of packaging formats, especially at plants supplying own-label products to other brand owners. Unless a manufacturer invests in several different and expensive packaging systems, a single line must be capable, not only of managing the widest possible range but also be future proofed with the ability to adapt to new bag weights, types and sizes according to changing market demands.

The Concetti pet food lines handle any pack weight between 0.3 - 5kg or 1,5 - 20Kg using open mouth bags made from paper, coated woven polypropylene, PE and aluminium foil, with and without handles or closable zip, with easy opening features, stabilos and so on. All bag sizes, within the limits of the machine, can be handled giving the maximum opportunity to exploit almost every sector of the dry pet food market. Bags can be heat sealed or sewn closed as required. In addition to pre-made bags, the line has a form-fill-seal capability and can produce bags from low cost continuous reels of tubular PE film giving the user the possibility of long production runs without the need to constantly replenishing the bag magazine.

Among others, Befood in Italy, a manufacturer of high quality dry pet food on behalf of third parties (private label), had a very wide range of packaging formats, so Concetti supplied two highly flexible bagging lines, that allows the entire range to be bagged and palletized easily and successfully. All bag sizes, within the limits of the machine, can be handled giving Befood the maximum opportunity to exploit almost every sector of the dry pet food market.
Other Concetti customers are Nova Foods, Bosch Tiernahrung, Maxipet, Cambrian Pet Foods.

Watch our machines at work on YOU TUBE!

The Concetti Group is pleased to announce their participation at the Powtech exhibition, taking place in Nuremberg, Germany, from 19 to 21 April 2016, Hall 1 Stand 612.
This year's highlights include the successful IGF bagging machine range for various types of pre-made bags and the renowned CONTINUA for FFS bags. Both models feature innovative devices allowing fast and accurate dosing and filling of powders, including those that are extremely fine, highly aerated and difficult to handle.

• Very light powders (below 0,1 kg/l), producing bags as long as 130 cm
• Fine powders, featuring many devices to guarantee product safety, a clean environment and producing compact, airtight and easy to palletise bags
• Flour, with a MAP system for flushing inert nitrogen into the bags and so prolonging the product freshness and shelf life
• Cement, featuring six linear bagging stations for product de-aeration and bag compaction, designed to use standard PE tubular film, instead of costly films with venting systems
• Corrosive products such as caustic soda/potash in flakes or prills.

Concetti also offers combinations of the two machine types able to handle both premade and FFS bags. The product range is completed by a wide range of palletisers from single column robots to high speed, high level layer machines.

Bastia Umbra, Italy – May 15, 2015

The renowned Concetti Group, innovator and manufacturer of the world's most prominent weighing, packaging, and palletizing equipment announced today the newly formed partnership with Bratney Companies of Des Moines, IA.

Bratney Companies specializes in providing packaging, processing and conditioning solutions to its customers in the agricultural market, including design-engineering, construction of turn-key facilities, equipment service, and preventative maintenance. Bratney offers turn-key packaging and palletizing lines for products and commodities from seed, grain, animal feed, pet food, and milled materials, to edibles such as dried beans, nuts, and rice from the field to market.

The addition of Bratney Companies' staff of sales managers, designers, engineers, equipment specialists and service technicians supported by our subsidiary, Concetti North America Corporation based in metro Atlanta, positions our group to offer professional sales services, commissioning expertise, after-sales technical support, and local spare parts.

"We feel this partnership fits perfectly with our existing network of distributors, representatives, and agents across North America and the USA in particular. With the addition of Bratney Companies, we are now a 400 employees-strong structure providing services in all 50 states with locations strategically positioned throughout the USA to supply unprecedented sales services and technical support to existing and new customers.
Bratney Companies' dedication to customer service, history of innovation, and culture of integrity is a perfect fit for the long-held values of the Concetti Group. We believe that this alignment will provide a very strong foundation for many years of future success." says Teodoro Concetti.

As Concetti Group, we bring nearly 100 years of combined plant, design, and packaging experience to our customer industries in over 60 countries around the world. The next generation Concetti family managers, Riccardo, Emanuele, and Francesco plan to continue the Concetti Group's long history of design and production while continuing to offer stability, reliability, and customer satisfaction the group is renowned for!

It's not only pets that have an appetite for dried petfoods. Some packaging machine suppliers also have a taste for this highly competitive and ever changing business. In 2010 when Cambrian Petfoods, a leading independent manufacturer of petfoods needed to expand packaging capacity at their Pencader plant, they selected Concetti as the supplier of a complete line from weigher to wrapped and finished pallet.

Cambrian produce an assortment of standard, premium and super premium dog and cat food in various formats and needed additional capacity in the 1.5 to 15Kg sizes using premade paper, coated paper, PE and Alum-PE bags. The line was also required to fill PE bags made from a tubular reel, a feature that Concetti offer as a standard option.

Above all, Cambrian required flexibility in the range of pack sizes and the ability to handle different types of bag and closure methods which were vital if the petfood manufacturer was to meet the widest possible present and future demands of this complex market.

Closure methods required included simple sewing, heat sealing and pinch top. Concetti were able to provide all of these in a single IGF 1200 machine together with a self-adhesive labeller for the empty bags and a ticket applicator feeding into the sewing head. The result, installed and commissioned in July 2011, is one of the most advanced and flexible petfood packing systems in the country.

PRODUCTIVITY combined with EFFICIENCY and RELIABILITY key factors for KEMIRA CHEMICALS (UK) LTD

It only seems like yesterday when Kemira Chemicals (UK) Ltd first contacted the Concetti Group for ideas and inspiration to increase production combined with greater efficiency and reliability for their automated 25kg weighing and bag filling lines.

Kemira Chemicals are a global 2 billion euro water chemistry company serving customers in water intensive industries, the Bradford site specialising in the production of dry polyacrylamide most commonly used for water treatment and paper making.

The existing packaging lines were old fashioned, limited in packing speeds and problematic with little or no support available. Following product trials conducted in the Concetti test facility and laboratory in 2007, the Concetti Group was awarded with the supply of the innovative CONTINUA Tubular FFS machine designed for handling very demanding products and powders. Now in 2012, Kemira have installed the fourth Continua line completing the program of upgrades to their bagging systems.

The product handling starts with the Concetti electronic net gravity fed weigher designed for handling free flowing powders. In the bag filling industry, the weighers integrated are dynamic in operation meaning the product handled is fed and weighed simultaneously into a hopper prior to discharge into the bag (net weighing). Due to this dynamic operation, although the design of the weighing mechanism is important, and can influence the final performance of the weigher in terms of speed and accuracy, the most vital consideration should be focused on the weigher feed system and control philosophy. Careful analyses should be given to the materials to be handled, their characteristics such as bulk density, particle size, flowability and fluidisation in deciding the most suitable feed device.

The feed system controls the product from the feed hopper into the weighing machine. The product must be under total control throughout the weighing cycle, most commonly 2 stage feed for main and minor feed, (progressive feed is also available for high speeds using brushless motors). The final product feed cut-off must be carefully engineered and accurately controlled, mainly due to the product feed and "in-flight" material. Control of the feed rate is paramount to enable the "in flight" material to be consistent throughout, should this become erratic or variable, accurate weighing is impossible.

The weigher chosen for Kemira Chemicals was the Concetti net gravity designed for handling free flowing granules and powders, feed gates radial in construction with teflon coated contact parts and featuring internal adjustments to control the feed rates in both main and minor feed cycles.

The unrivalled performance of the Concetti weigher was demonstrated with the final test results showing an accuracy of less than 8gr sigma 1 (68% of weighments within +/- 7.5gr of the 25kg target weight).

The Concetti CONTINUA bag filling machine positioned underneath the weigher is a Tubular FFS (Form Fill Seal) designed to produce bags formed from a tube of plastic and wound into a reel. Continua is a special machine designed for handling a huge variety of demanding products including fluid powders, abrasive construction materials, corrosive granules/flakes and free flowing petro-chemical plastics.

Continua is available with many features that can be applied to specific applications such as product de-aeration probes, special coatings for product contact surfaces, bag compacting, residual air evacuation, upper edge seal area cleaning, seal cooling and inert gas purging (MAP). Dust problems are confined to history with our new generation of bag holders guaranteeing a dust and spillage free operation.

To increase the bag stability and shape, Continua also features the K-Sealing option, creating a block style bag perfect for palletising highly presentable, safe and compact loads.

For Kemira Chemicals, the accurately filled, clean, stable and square shaped bags are presented to the existing palletiser system, another example of the success of Concetti Group technology.

Dave Goult, Site Manager of Kemira Chemicals (UK) Ltd says "Concetti Continua performance and plant availability through their commitment to the highest levels of professional service made the choice for investment an obvious one. I would have no hesitation in recommending Concetti packaging machinery to anyone thinking of installing or upgrading a packaging facility".

CONTINUA FFS-MACHINE FOR BAGGING NaOH and KOH FLAKES

The system is composed of:

ELECTRONIC "CBC" GROSS WEIGHER TYPE "GROSS/CV", FEATURING A VIBRATING CHANNEL IN-FEED SYSTEM, FITTED WITH CLEANING AND INSPECTION DOOR COMPLETE WITH MICROSWITCH. CONSTRUCTION IN STAINLESS STEELAUTOMATIC BAGGING MACHINE MOD. "CONTINUA 600™" TO FORM, FILL AND HEAT SEAL POLYETHYLENE BAGS MADE FROM REEL-WOUND TUBULAR "PE".

DESIGN DATA

PRODUCT

CAPACITY

SPECIAL DESIGN CHARACTERISTICS

DRY ROOM SPECIFICATIONS

Housing frame details

Moisture monitoring of bagging room.

The relative air humidity and temperature should be checked continuously by a hydrometer installed inside the conditioned area.

Floor characteristics.

The floor will have to be featured with a slight slope, so that the washing water will be conveyed in a precise point of the area. Inside the conditioned room there will have to be no humidity sources (e.g. channel to collect the water with water inside). If there are channel or basins, they will have to be hermetically closed during the system operation; they will be opened only when the installation is washed.

Daily cleaning.

We recommend to clean each day (16 working hours) the internal weighing-bag-forming machine from the dust by using dry compressed air and/or portable aspiration machine.

Washing.

Based on the above given information, washing of the weighing and bag-forming machine should be done 1 time per week, generally on Friday afternoon/evening and before the week-end. The air conditioned system must be switched on all the time. The dry air into the product flow of the weighing/bagging machine must be in function all the time. The washing operation (internal parts where we have the product passage or the washing of the entire installation), will be done manually by the operators and before the weekend break. After 24/36 hours from the washing, the installation should dry and ready to begin to work. Together with our final documentation, we will supply the manual washing procedure that the operators need to respect.

Dry air into the product flow of the weighing/bagging machine.

Dust aspiration during the installation function.

Operator's quality.

The operators (machine operators and technicians) are the key factor for a trouble free operation of the machines. Skilled and motivated operator must be recruited and properly trained in correct operation and control of the machines as well in the daily tasks of maintenance and trouble shooting. The Client will have to guarantee a temporal continuity of the crew assigned to the operation and maintenance the installation, in order to facilitate the correct functioning of the equipment and reduce the possible problems caused by the inexperience of the operators.

The benefit of using PE film for cement packing is becoming ever more widely recognised. The cost is lower compared to paper valve sacks and the waste packaging much easier to dispose of, but more importantly the product is better protected against moisture and the end user reduces product wasted in storage or on site. All this makes PE film the material of choice particularly for premium grade and specialist products.

The new system from Concetti provides a completely sealed bag using plain LLDPE film without any micro perforations to both preserve the product quality and extend the shelf life, with outputs from 400 to 800 bags/hr depending on product and pack weights in the range 10 to 25Kg.

Using form, fill and seal (FFS) machines for fine powders can sometimes be difficult for several reasons. A fine powder does not release air trapped during the filling cycle like a coarse granular material might. Unless most of this air is removed from the sealed bag palletising will be troublesome and in extreme cases, impossible. Removing the air is usually achieved by micro perforating the film either directly or through a labyrinth arrangement so air is released slowly after filling and sealing. Unfortunately this can also allow moisture ingress over time.

For cement and premix manufactured as a fine powder intended for mixing with water on site, any moisture ingress in storage is obviously extremely unwelcome.

Concetti have long experience with these fine powders on their Continua FFS machines and already had a system for evacuating air from bags without micro perforations and so, only some small additional development were needed to increase the output speed. The new unit is a linear FFS now with six stations.

Product is dosed gravimetrically using an abrasion resistant two-speed screw feeder into a net weigher. The screw can be fitted with an automated air blast system to clean the screw flights between products where necessary and a rear outlet allows any residue to be discharged into a container with the screw running in reverse.

A dust tight filling spout allows the bag to be filled and deaeration probes carry out the first stage of air removal from the filled bag. The bag is closed and indexed to two additional stations both equipped with vibration to assist in further settling of the product before closing. Station number five also has a device for partial evacuation of any remaining air. Once the air is evacuated, the bag top is cleaned and heat applied to give a hermetically sealed pack.

Sack mouth cleaning prior to sealing is vital to ensure reliable closing. Concetti can also offer a feature where the bag top is double sealed to further ensure security of the closure.

Finally, on station six the bag top is cooled to increase the seal strength before the filled bag is released. An adjustable bag flattener on the downstream conveying line presses the bag to give a more compact and consistent shape. The result is a completely sealed, well shaped bag without excessive air trapped inside that can be easily and confidently palletised.

CONCETTI INTRODUCE A NEW GENERATION OF MULTIFUNCTION MACHINES FOR BAGS, CARTONS AND SHELF READY PACKS

The Concetti Group is a leading supplier of turn-key bagging and palletising lines for the pet food industry worldwide. Latest developments in the palletising field include a system with both robotic and conventional palletising for cartons, shelf ready packs and paper or PE bags, including an innovative bag-in-box facility.

Many dry pet food producers serve demanding markets and provide an extremely wide range of products for dogs and cats in many different sizes and formats to suit the end users. So, flexibility is a key requirement but for this application the range was essentially all in small pack weights, speed was a major factor, particularly in the palletising of bags.

The newly developed system receives products including Shelf Ready Packs from four (4) automatic carton/box filling lines and two (2) automatic vertical FFS machines, all of which were existing. One VFFS machine's output can be diverted via a collation shrink wrapping system to bring several small bags together for ease of handling. Concetti supplied the high level carton and bag conveying systems including an elevator as part of the project.

Empty pallets are stored in one dispensing system capable of holding three different sized pallets including half Euro Pallets. Each dispenser is adjustable to handle any of the pallet sizes and dispense them as requested by the system to any of four different robotic pallet build stations, using a shuttle conveyor. Each robot has two case infeed points and two pallet build positions plus a separate interlayer sheet magazine with two different sheet sizes available. The robots supplied were KUKA type KR180 3200 each equipped with a Concetti designed pick-up tool for multiple packs.

The packs are grouped and oriented to allow the printed data to appear on the outward facing surfaces, before arriving at the pick up point. Packs can be turned upside down to allow the lid to be used as the base for the Shelf Ready system.

The multi-pack pick up head allows the robots to cycle at moderate speeds and handle the cartons gently to avoid product damage and ensure the Shelf Ready Packs reach the retailer in perfect condition. The heads also incorporate vacuum cups for picking and placing interlayer sheets according to the programme. Pallets can be stacked up to 2400mm high.

Bags from one or other of two VFFS machines are handled either individually or as a collation shrink pack, by a Concetti PS-AA conventional layer palletiser. Pack weights are from 3-6Kg and speeds up to 2700 bags/hr depending on pack size and layer pattern. Bag orientation is by a double turning post system. The PS-AA has it's own pallet dispenser adustable for Euro, Half Euro or CP 1 pallet sizes together with bottom sheet dispenser. In a highly innovative development, Concetti incorporated into the design telescopic arms with suction pick-up heads to load boxes into pre-erected corrugated cases for extra protection in transit and storage.

In this way the PS-AA can handle bags separately or collated in shrink film as a convention layer palletiser, or to stack individual bags inside cases on Euro or CP1 pallets. The empty cases are fed manually at present but the system is designed to accept cases from an automatic erector in the future.

Loaded pallets are brought to a single point from the robot build stations and the PS-AA bag palletiser by pallet cross transfer systems and chain conveyor. From this position pallets are conveyed into an automatic stretch wrapper.

Control of the system is by preset programmes created, edited and managed by Concetti's easy to use Touch Screen system. The great majority of the project used standard Concetti components and systems but brought together in an imaginative way with the customer's close support to provide a system that is reliable, flexible, easy to use and maintain. The user has the widest possible choice of packaging and palletising methods to satisfy the most demanding clients

The entire system was as is usual in the Concetti philosophy, built and tested at the factory before shipment to give the customer the assurance of a rapid and trouble free start-up on site.