Share

The Tönnies Group has built its bovine animal competence center in Badbergen, Lower Saxony. The cuts of beef are vacuum-packed in thermoforming and shrink-wrap machines, a course of that has become extra efficient than ever following renovations on the web site: Now, energy-saving Atlas Copco variable-speed vacuum pumps are used to create vacuum circumstances at two central stations.What used to be a blended slaughterhouse has become a “bovine animal competence center”: For a long time, cattle and pigs were slaughtered and butchered at the similar time in Badbergen on behalf of other corporations. In 2017, the Tönnies Group took over the positioning and determined to base its complete slaughtering operation in Badbergen – up till that point, this had taken place on the company’s main site in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. In 2020, Tönnies Beef reopened the positioning after in depth conversion and renovation. The Group invested round eighty five million euro within the building and state-of-the-art expertise at this website in a small city in northern Lower Saxony, between Oldenburg and Osnabrück. The slaughtering, butchering and ending processes are primarily based on the most recent cooling technology, machine-based butchering and highly automated choosing and delivery traces.
Several hundred tons of meat leave the site daily and 95% of the animal – virtually everything – is utilized. This permits Tönnies to satisfy different eating habits around the world: While German shoppers favor lean beef, meat with a thick layer of fat is in style in Scandinavia and other European international locations, based on the manufacturer’s website.
Efficient screw vacuum pumps provide forming, low and nice vacuums

“The cuts weigh between 1.5 and 9 kilograms after butchering,” explains Waldemar Metzger, Technical Manager of Tönnies Beef GmbH & Co. KG in Badbergen. The cuts are vacuum-packed for varied major clients. For this function, Tönnies has installed a number of packaging traces in the halls: Seven thermoforming curler machines and two robot-operated shrink-wrap packaging machines. Efficient Atlas Copco vacuum pumps are used in the techniques to vacuum pack the tubular/shrink luggage and thermoformed plastic trays, and to keep the meat actually recent. They work in two stations and supply forming, low and nice vacuums.
The thermoforming machines equipped by vacuum station 1. There are four Atlas Copco GHS 585 VSD+ variable-speed, oil-injected screw vacuum pumps that evacuate the air as a lot as forty mbar (absolute), in addition to 4 small boosters that lower the stress even further to three mbar. One of the screw pumps supplies the forming vacuum for the thermoforming roller machines, which only require around a hundred to a hundred and fifty mbar for the forming course of. The different vacuum pumps on this station are linked to the boosters. One of the pumps is redundant at any given time: This can be the case within the second vacuum station, which contains 5 GHS 730 VSD+ pumps that remove the air from the shrink luggage at the Cryovac traces. “The measurement of the cuts of meat is mechanically detected by our systems,” explains Waldemar Metzger. “The packaging machines then routinely insert the cuts of meat into the tubular bags, which are minimize to the right dimension underneath a vacuum bell.” Under the hood, all ambient air is then evacuated in two stages till the pressure is around 3 mbar (fine vacuum).
“With the forming vacuum – or thermoforming vacuum, as it’s also known as – the plastic tray is formed by cutting the foil roll,” says the Technical Manager. After filling the shell with smaller pieces of meat, the shell is “wed” to the cover movie: The software closes and seals the packaging hermetic at 3 to five mbar utilizing the nice vacuum. Sorting machines assign the person trays and tubular bags to bigger packing containers, which are then used to select custom packing containers for buyer orders.
Efficient speed regulation reduces vitality requirements by a third or more

Waldemar Metzger has been working in Badbergen for 20 years and has been a part of the planning and execution stages of changing the mixed slaughterhouse to a purely beef operation from the very starting. This included the decision to buy Atlas Copco variable-speed vacuum pumps. “ pressure gauge 10 bar as expertise is concerned, being able to vary the speed of the GHS vacuum pumps is essential to us and saves power,” stresses the Tönnies worker. “Compared to fixed-speed machines, you can reliably minimize down power necessities by round a third – maybe even by half, relying on the diversity factor.”

The controls on the vacuum pumps have a user-friendly plain textual content show, which also signifies the running hours and maintenance intervals. Since the Atlas Copco pumps may be connected directly to an exhaust system, it was potential to make use of air-cooled pumps. According to the manufacturer, this improves the climate of the room; it’s not necessary to have the additional room cooling often required when utilizing central vacuum methods.
The project was applied on website by and with Oliver Hornberg, Managing Director of Eugen Theis Vakuumtechnik in Werther. He delivered the pumps to Tönnies Beef, ready to make use of – together with a 400 m pipeline in the transformed slaughterhouse, measuring in locations to a diameter of DN 300. His firm, Eugen Theis GmbH, was based in 1984 and makes a speciality of vacuum expertise. In 1999, Hornberg took over the business from its founder, Eugen Theis, and 20 years later, in late 2021, offered it to Atlas Copco after he couldn’t find a successor. “Our two kids are pursuing other profession paths,” he says. Hornberg himself remains Managing Director even after the company was offered to Atlas Copco and is looking forward to significant progress underneath the umbrella of one of many world’s largest suppliers of vacuum pumps. The firm already operates all through Germany: “From Flensburg within the north to Regensburg within the south and Halle (Saale) in the east,” he says, outlining the attain of his company: This also includes Badbergen in the (north)west, as he generally stops by at Tönnies Beef to maintain up the machines.
Share