STORY: New flexible bakery line concept from Mecatherm

Mecatherm, a French producer of automatic industrial bakery and pastry production lines, has showcased Mecaflex, its new flexible production line concept, at the IBIE show  in Las Vegas this week.

Mecaflex offers the ability to produce a wide range of products from different process combinations, with diverse baking tray types and formats. It also features simple and high performance simulation and control tools.

Mecatherm says Mecatherm is its “response for the sector’s industrial companies who need to face changes in consumer tastes and manage the high demand for new products”.

Olivier Sergent, Mecatherm CEO, said of the launch: “Companies who work in the industrial bakery and pastry sector need to be extremely agile to keep up with market trends. While agility seems to be simple enough to achieve, it is actually the product of a considerable amount of work at all levels in the production chain, from management down to operators.

“We saw that our customers were dealing with this agility issue, and so we developed Mecaflex, a solution that enables industrial companies to invest without worrying about the future”.

Mecaflex is built on three basic principles:

  1. A flexible line architecture

At the start of the line, a deposit zone enables as many line heads to be connected as required, with the possibility to deposit individual products (trays, foils etc.) into Mecaframe frames.

Along the line, production and processes can be customised in zones at each step, and at the end of the line, a smart supply of the multiple packaging lines enables a reduction in machine supply operations.

  1. Flexible equipment

Mecaflex uses the new M-TA oven and is also composed of the new M-UB handling system, which it says guarantees a homogeneous treatment of the products. Quick tool change processes are used when required (depanner head change, scoring tool change etc.)

  1. Agile management software

Mecaflex is a line management tool that assists operators as they plan their production, in order to reduce impact on line availability and to provide instant monitoring of the different products during production on the line (end of run, start of next run). This solution is part of the complete digital offer that Mecatherm has developed for its users.