William Santus & Co Ltd
William Santus & Co Ltd has been making mints and traditional sweets by hand since 1898. Based in Wigan, Lancashire, the company is the manufacturer of Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls.
The ownership and management of the business has been passed down through the same family for generations. It is currently owned and managed by the Winnard family, William’s great and great, great nephews.
Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls are still manufactured using the same traditional methods as when Mrs Santus originally made the sweets in her kitchen in 1898. The natural ‘secret recipe’ contains no artificial additives or colours. Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls are GM free, gluten free and are suitable for the vegetarian/vegan market.
The Challenge
William Santus & Co focuses on high quality, reliability, innovation and a professional and friendly service delivered in an ethical manner. Its products are of the highest standard, using certified, quality ingredients. It was therefore vital that its process solutions partner should embrace the same values which is why William Santus & Co chose Yamato. The confectionery manufacturer’s production process uses high speed packaging equipment so therefore required a weighing solution that could match that speed and not interrupt the production process.
It was important that the weigher should deal with the variety of packaging involved and the different sizes and weights being processed. Speed and accuracy were paramount concerns.
The Solution
Yamato proposed that William Santus & Co should install and use an Alpha Advance 10 head weigher which is the ideal machine to deal with various free-flowing wrapped and un-wrapped confectionery.
Yamato engineers delivered both the Alpha Advance multihead weigher, a pedal operated bulk bag funnel add-on and a training package.
The Alpha Advance is designed to be easy to use and its simplified structure has improved toughness able to withstand greater loads than the Alpha Plus. Accuracy has also been enhanced, allowing the Alpha Advance series to achieve impressive levels of high-speed weighing: 75 weighments per minute (WPM) by the 10-head model.
William Santus & Co’s targets for the required solution were speeds of up to 70 WPM for weights up to 500 g and 15 WPM for bulk consignments of 2 kg.
“We have dealt with the Leeds based Yamato team for years and feel that they always deliver each of our objectives to the letter. Months on from this project and Yamato has improved our production process and made us more profitable. We would not think twice about trusting them to deliver future projects to such high standards as they have with this.”
Gareth Winnard, Director and General manager of William Santus Co. Ltd
The Result
The Alpha Advance Series has high frequency load cells which shorten the settle time of the weighing cycle to deliver high-speed weighing. The Yamato AFC (auto feeder control) system enables controlled feeding, thereby improving accuracy and productivity.
Feeder amplitude enables the Alpha Advance to handle sticky or fragile products.
The multihead weigher is easy to maintain. The modular actuator unit incorporates the high-performance Yamato strain gauge load cell with a stepper motor driven system. It is a modular design which makes troubleshooting and maintenance easy and quick. The buckets and linear feeder pans can be removed and re-attached without tools, allowing the machine to be easily cleaned. Large radius corners also make it easy and quick to clean, reducing downtime. Hygienic spring-less buckets are available.
The Alpha Advance is easy to operate. It has a 10.4-inch colour touch-screen operator interface which has user-friendly icons. Up to 300 pre-set programs can be memorised and two products mixing is available (ADW-A-0320S).
The weigher also features self-diagnostics. All-important system conditions, including voltages, input/output status, software versions, and analogue/digital converter can be monitored and diagnosed through the colour touch-screen operator interface.
Optional network remote control and data acquisition is also available. The Alpha Advance can be controlled by a local area network (LAN). Data acquisition can be undertaken by Ethernet, USB or RS232 connectivity enabling feedback control between the multihead weigher and a checkweigher.