An apparatus for delivering product carriers, in particular L boards, to a conveying line for food products comprises a store for the product carriers and a conveying device for conveying the product carriers, in particular isolated product carriers, along a conveying direction to the conveying line, wherein each product carrier has at least one base section and at least one cover section connected to the base section; and wherein the apparatus comprises a pre-treatment device for the product carriers that is configured to pre-treat the cover section of a product carrier with respect to its base section.

A transfer system in the form of a robot line used in one embodiment to transfer products, such as slices of meat or other fresh food, while complying with the hygienic requirements. The robot line may transfer the products simply and with little constructive and financial effort. The robots used for this purpose may be very simply constructed with only one swivel arm and the robot base may be guided below the working plane, and only the swivel arm and the gripper may be disposed above the working plane.

The present invention relates to a packaging assembly and a method of packaging differently sized products, such as fresh meat cuts. The packaging assembly can include at least one thermoform packaging machine having at least two forming stations. The thermoform packaging machine can also include a control unit configured for providing, during operation and in a manner that is automatically adaptable in response to the supplied products, formats with a first or a second number of troughs for placing the respective products thereinto.

The present invention relates to a food production line (11) with a forming apparatus (5) that comprises a rotating drum (1), which is utilized to form a product (7) from a food mass and a packaging machine (13), which packages the products in a packaging (14). The present invention further relates to a process for forming a product, whereas several products are formed and subsequently dropped simultaneously from a drum on an accumulation belt.

A package comprising includes a base film, at least one closing film, and at least one product interposed between the base film and the closing film. The closing film is hermetically fixed to the base film at a sealing band with the product housed in a packaging seat defined between the closing film and the base film. Also described is a process for making the package described above.

A method and an apparatus are provided for the grouped arrangement, orientation and packaging of stacked food products like patty stacks. The method includes feeding a food product by a first feed belt in the direction of a first X-axis, and then ejecting the food product onto a second feed belt to form stacked food products. The method also includes transporting the stacked food products by the second feed belt along a Y-axis generally perpendicular to the X-axis and in the direction of an orientation mask which is arranged above the second feed belt. The stacked food products are oriented by contacting the orientation mask. The oriented food products may therefore be grouped together in oriented rows for packaging when further moved along the Y-axis by the second feed belt. The method and apparatus enable rapid orienting of various types of food products that are typically stacked and packaged.

A wrapping machine for wrapping trayed food products includes a wrap station at which trayed food products are wrapped and a film dispensing system for drawing out film at the wrap station. A conveying system moves trayed food products through the wrapping machine. The machine may include a printer and label apply arrangement positioned for applying labels to trayed food products after wrapping, where the printer and label apply arrangement includes a support that is pivotable between an operating position and an access position. The film dispensing system may include a knife movable for cutting the film, and opposite ends of the knife are mechanically linked via spaced apart first and second belts to maintain alignment of the opposite ends.

A conveyor device for conveying food products on a plurality of parallel conveyor tracks and for formatting the food products in a specific product format, especially for conveying and formatting stacks or interleaved units made of a plurality of slices of cheese or meat products is provided. The conveyor device fills a product gap on one of the conveyor tracks incoming on the input side with a food product so that on the output side all parallel conveyor tracks are supplied with the food products when a product gap is sensed. A corresponding method is also provided.

An apparatus for making a canned food product in a can, the food product including a first composition and a second composition, and the apparatus includes a filling head including a first channel and a second channel for respectively directing the first composition and the second composition into the can. A first supply assembly includes a first supply container containing the first composition, and the first supply container is connected to the first channel; and a second supply assembly. The second supply assembly includes a second supply container containing the second composition; a dosing piston connected to the second supply container through a third channel; a hose connecting the dosing piston to the second channel; and one or more rotary valves between the dosing piston and the filling head.

A system and method of transporting and loading coextruded meat products in a packaging machine are disclosed. A single line of the coextruded meat products are conveyed using a linear transfer conveyor to an orienting conveyor onto which they are transferred. The orienting conveyor establishes a group of coextruded meat products which is subsequently transported from the orienting conveyor into a cavity of the packaging machine using a pushing device. It is contemplated one or more of these processing lines may run in parallel and that various steps could involve batch operations, such as, for example, multiple groups being pushed into multiple cavities simultaneously.