Haliburton Upgrades Packaging System

ONTARIO, Calif.Haliburton International Foods, Inc., announced it will be the first U.S. food company to install the new Adept Packaging Automation Cell (PAC) from Adept Technology, Pleasanton, Calif. The Adept PAC utilizes vision-guided robotics to achieve packaging speeds of up to 150 ppm. 

Haliburton President & CEO Ian Schenkel said: We have been looking for a fast, versatile case packaging solution for quite some time. The nature of our business requires us to be fast and flexible to meet the changing needs of our customers in the most cost effective way that we can.  Through the use of intelligent vision-guided robotics, Adept has developed the first cost effective solution that provides the consistency and throughput of traditional packaging machinery with the dexterity and flexibility of manual packaging.  We are proud to partner with a great American company to solve our packaging automation challenges. In an industry that is dominated by foreign competition, Adept developed and is now implementing a high speed, cost effective solution to meet the demands of the US food industry.  As we all strive to create and retain jobs in America, our partnership with Adept is a great example of American companies working together to solve American problems."

The first two Adept PAC systems will delivered to Haliburton this month and are part of the larger IQF Packaging Automation Project scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of 2011. One robot will be installed on each of two new IQF Vertical-Form-Fill-Seal (VFFS) packaging lines installed in the last quarter of 2010, and will be tasked with the duty of case packing up to 140 bags per minute of a variety of IQF vegetables, rices, pastas and frozen fruits.