Sir Boyd Tunnock is well-known for his great sense of humor and manufacturing the UK’s most popular caramel wafer biscuits. The 86-year-old Chairman and CEO of Tunnock’s world-famous Scottish family business sets high standards, not only in terms of manufacturing but also in packaging their products. In order to assure quality, Tunnock has relied on equipment from Syntegon Technology, formerly Bosch Packaging Technology, for 50 years – and recently approached the packaging experts when he needed a new line.
With constantly growing consumer demand, the company needed to increase production output. That's why Tunnock’s decided to invest in an additional production line to package its caramel wafer biscuits. The objective was to increase output and flexibility on a small footprint. To keep downtime for changeovers as short as possible, the new line had to be easy to operate, to clean and to maintain.
Syntegon provided a flexible and comprehensive packaging system including a buffer, two horizontal flow wrappers with intelligent infeed and a flexible case packer. The two Sigpack FIT feeding modules use linear motor technology. It enables a fast and continuous product flow as well as format changes at the push of a button. The FIT automatically moves and groups the primary wrapped caramel wafer biscuits into multipacks of either four, five, six or eight products at a constant product flow. Thanks to automatic film splicing a fast and safe change of reels is achieved. The multipacks are then transported in two streams into one Sigpack TTMC case packer. Thanks to its patented and tool-less changeover concept, the TTMC is easy to operate and ready for a vertical re-start in only few minutes. It produces high quality from the first case onwards. Maximum process safety and carton control guarantee highest reliability and efficiency.
Tunnock’s decided to round off the installation of the new line with an additional Syntegon training package for their operators and maintenance staff. In a combined classroom and practical machine training, the Tunnock's employees learned how to maintain and adjust the new equipment. On site, Syntegon provides support through its UK service hub in Derby.
Thanks to the new intelligent infeed, the overall footprint of the new line is four meters shorter compared to the existing equipment. “The new Syntegon packaging line saves us valuable floor space and achieves excellent efficiency results at maximum flexibility,” said Stuart Loudon, Project Manager at Tunnock’s. And the joint projects are not over yet. Boyd Tunnock decided to invest in four additional Syntegon machines to assist in the company’s growth.
