INTERVIEW WITH UNIFILLER

Unifiller is a leading supplier providing portioning depositors to bakeries and food manufacturers worldwide. Headquarter and production site is in Vancouver, Canada.

Unifiller Europe is a dedicated team of professionals with extensive knowledge and expertise for applications in bakeries, confectioneries, ready meals and other food- and non-food-processing productions. The company supports customers and distribution partners around Europe in regard to new technologies and techniques, applications, automation of production processes, sales & marketing. In the Technology Centre in Lörrach, Unifiller has established excellent conditions for training and education as well as possibilities to run live-tests on their machines, the Cakes Line and the Flexible Production Line. Unifiller’s customers can profit from many years of experience and an outstanding service!

Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?

UNIFILLER: Unifiller Europe has developed a range of production line concepts for industries, that are looking for easy-to-implement solutions to optimize the customers production processes. Meanwhile Unifiller offers concepts for the production of round and rectangular layer cakes, solutions to work on automated packaging lines and our Flex-Line has been designed for the production of a wide range of different products with the same equipment (only changing accessories). Most hygienic depositing, weight-accuracy and an easy handling of the machines are our focus and key factors for our success.

E.E: What’s the news about new products?

UNIFILLER: Lately we have developed our Mini Filling Line, a system consisting of a 1,5m conveyor with guide rails, a depositor with photo sensor for detecting the incoming vessels (glasses, pots, containers etc) and a connected buffer table behind, which gives the customer some time and space for closing the pots (putting lids on it for example) and putting the ready products into boxes. As this system can be equipped with any depositor from our wide range of different systems the Mini Filling Line can perfectly be adapted to our customers needs in regards to depositing volume, speed and capacity.

E.E: What are the ranges of products?

UNIFILLER: The Unifiller depositing systems and the range of possible applications are as diverse as the products and processes in the sectors of Bakery and Food Service. Solutions for the quick, precise, clean and efficient processing of different products are our specialty. Our unique piston filling system enables an extremely gentle processing of all kinds of different products and weight-accurate depositing without any damage of the products and their structure. Furthermore, we offer very flexible systems for single or multi lane depositing of products into all kinds of different packaging, form, moulds or trays – and the integration into existing packaging and production lines is very simple.

We are the market leader for machines for filling, top- and side icing and decorating round cakes, tarts and cupcakes. And last but not least, we develop and sell a range of different transfer pumps to easily transfer the products into the hoppers of the depositors.

E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?

UNIFILLER: The bakery and food processing markets are very developed already, but industries have to further increase automation for being competitive. Finding skilled and reliable employees is not easy and the working conditions are hard and not very popular. This is why automation can help increasing flexibility on one hand and health protection for the staff on the other side. Automation doesn’t kill jobs, it is a real solution to reduce dangerous and physical demanding jobs.

E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?

UNIFILLER: Servo controlled depositors are more and more requested. Those machines make life easy for our customers and employees and minimize the risk of making mistakes: all settings and parameters of each recipe are saved in the PLC control of the depositor and product changes can be realized very quickly at the push of a button.

E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?

UNIFILLER: The Unifiller FlexLine is one of our most innovative solutions at the moment. Centerpiece of this line is the Multi Station, the most flexible multi-lane depositor in the market. With this production line customers can produce round layer cakes of diameters from 10 – 30cm and rectangular layer cakes of up to 40 x 60cm in big quantities; in addition to that, our customers can produce muffins and decorated cupcakes, brownies, cakes of different sizes, pies, eclairs, macarons, single-serve desserts plus a long list of other fine bakery products on this line, just by changing the accessories. Each line is consisting of Unifiller standard components with short lead times, but designed individually according to the customer’s needs. Like this, each FlexLine is unique somehow.

E.E: What estimations do you have for 2022?

UNIFILLER: Further automation of production processes will be a clear focus for the coming year(s), in many fields: the handling of the trays with cobots is one of the topics we are working on. Pick and place is another one. A cobot can be used to handle decoration tasks along the conveyor of our CakeLine or FlexLine. Automated product detection with camera and the depositing with handheld nozzle trough a cobot is just an example of how a cobots can help to automate production lines in a bakery.