Coding of eggs
Three sites with 180,000 chickens. That is a lot of eggs per week. At Eierhof, therefore, everything apart from laying is done almost entirely automatically. Even the coding of the egg cartons and the eggs with an egg coding system.
Conveyor belts accompany the eggs from the egg-laying hall to the packaging area alongside. There they go via roller conveyors against the wall towards the grading machine.
“From there they go in one line to the inkjet head”, says manager Adriaan Staelens. That egg-coating system marks eggs at a speed of 400 a minute. This is done by spraying the ink in tiny drops. That way, the eggs remain intact and the end result is easy to read.
Hardly any maintenance
“An inkjet as an eicode system is also very precise and requires hardly any maintenance. With this head I don’t have any problems – it does what it needs to do. Without me constantly having to make adjustments or add on something.
“The information that needs to be on it depends on the egg. I indicate which barn they come from. The software then supplements this with an identification code and a code that differs per size. The touchscreen is easy to work with. That was important. I don’t want to spend five minutes pushing buttons before I can continue.”
Four printer lines
After the inkjet head, the marked eggs automatically go into a box. And then via the roller conveyors to one of the four printer lines. “They print the best-before date and an identification code on the top. All printing lines automatically adjust the best-before date. The only thing we do is replace the cartridges,” Adriaan says.
“Then the boxes roll towards the end of the conveyor belt. There we manually put them in packaging boxes and stick a label on them. We are also looking at the automation possibilities here, but we are a bit cramped in terms of space. That will be a challenge. But Codipack must solve that”, Adriaan concludes with a smile.
Contact us
Also looking for a solution to code your eggs? We are happy to advise you on the best choice. Contact us for more information at info@codipack.com