Scottish fresh fish firm increases production with semi-automatic weigher

Yamato Dataweigh has supplied a new semi automatic weighing solution to Prime Seafoods, based in Fraserburgh, Scotland.

Prime Seafoods buys fresh fish from Peterhead Fish Market and processes it at its purpose-designed facility, before dispatching to its customers within 48 hours.

In addition to supplying retail customers, Prime Seafoods supplies supermarket chain Aldi with haddock and smoked haddock fillets for its The Fishmonger range.

Packing pairs of fillets by hand meant pairing them for size and shape by eye, then weighing them on a set of hand scales before packing. This process led to random and overweight packs which did not meet the required consistent standards for size and weight.

So, when the company was looking to improve its fresh fish packaging process, it turned to Yamato Scale Dataweigh.

Prime Seafoods’ owner, George Forman, explained:

“When processing by hand, we were treble handling the fish and weighing it using small sets of scales. This process led to overweight product and too much variation in both the weight and size of fish per pack.

“We needed a better way to meet targets and get more consistency in our paired packs – we needed to make the process less random. So, to improve accuracy and speed, and reduce the amount of product handling, we looked at automating our weighing process.”

Prime Seafoods looked at several options for its important process change before settling on the 14-head Table Semi-Automatic Dataweigh (TSDW) from Yamato.

“We heard about Yamato from a new member of staff who had worked with older versions of Yamato machines,” said George. “A loan machine is currently installed at our Fraserburgh plant, pending installation of permanent equipment.”

Prime Seafoods selected the Yamato TSDW for one particular reason. Other machines use drops to move the fish along the line. This is fine for solid, frozen fish, but can damage fresh products.

“The Yamato machine uses a single belt” said George. “Our fish is fresh, softer and more supple than frozen fish and is therefore prone to damage from dropping. The Yamato TSDW provides gentle handling, which prevents this damage from happening.

“It helps us grade our fish and ensure that each pack is target weight and that the fillets are equal in size. We have had the loan machine installed for 3 months and it’s been excellent, saving us both time and money. It delivers accuracy of weight and allows us to process more products more quickly.

“Now, just one person feeds the line. Previously, we had four people doing that job. It is cost saving because we can take two people out of the line, but can still bring them back in during times of increased demand and when we have harder hourly targets to meet.”

The TSDW produces fixed-weight packages at speeds of up to 30 weighings per minute, reduces weighing loss and minimises product damage by retaining an element of manual checking.

Set up and training took less than two hours to complete with the help of a Yamato engineer. George Forman said:

“Both the set up and software implementation were very straightforward.”

Thanks to the conveyor belt, in addition to fish, the Tabletop Semi-Automatic Dataweigh is also an ideal solution for other fragile products such as meat and vegetables.