Jan 11 2012 --- With the sale of its “Flexline FL 8/8 CA” cup filling machine, the OYSTAR Group continues to cultivate its excellent business relations to FAGE, one of the company’s longstanding customers. Apart from a cup filling and sealing machine from OYSTAR Gasti for packaging its main product – “Greek Yogurt” – the dairy has already put three other cup filling machines from OYSTAR Hamba into operation at its New York manufacturing plant.

At FAGE the Flexline FL 8/8 CA in aseptic design fills and seals both preformed round cups and double chamber cups with strained yogurt. Fruit fillings or the addition of honey as well as fruit yogurt are also possible. The filling quantity for the round cups is 170 ml, 200 ml or 250 ml; and 150 ml in the case of the double chamber cups. Thanks to the fully automatic adjustments, cups of different heights can be processed without changing the format. Depending on the cup geometry and product properties, the FS system, which operates with two double production lines, achieves a production rate of up to 36,480 cups per hour.

One Hundred Percent Sterile Production

The cups are first cleaned by means of ionized air and then sterilized and dried through suctioning to remove any particles that might be present. Afterwards they are filled with the respective recipe by means of a pre- and main dosing device. For this purpose, the product is supplied by means of a valve manifold to a 200 liter supply tank that is connected directly to the dosing units. During filling, the cups are elevated to the filling nozzles with the help of steam traps in order to obtain a proper filling pattern. All of the dosing equipment is designed for CIP /SIP treatment. When it comes to cleaning and sterilization, the entire dosing device is rinsed with a caustic cleaning solution and sterilized afterwards with 130 °C steam. All movements are servo-controlled so that changes in the filling curves or filling quantities can be easily controlled via the control panel.

To seal the cups, pre-punched cover plates and – depending on the product – additional inserts made of parchment are taken with vacuum suction grippers from a feeder, sterilized with sterile air enriched with peroxide and dried by hot air. For uninterrupted production, the lid stations are equipped with changeover devices which make refilling of the emptied feeder possible without having to stop the machine. Afterwards the cups are sealed, the tightness examined once again by heating up the cup head space and finally removed by a packer and put into crates for transport.