>One of Europe's largest flour millers required a new high-capacity automatic sack-opening system at a UK factory. Continued growth had created a production bottleneck around manually processing 25kg bags of different flour products.

The design brief called for an end to the physically demanding practice of manually cutting and tipping sacks, while achieving a throughput of 300 sacks per hour without product contamination. The system also needed to handle bags from 10kg to 25kg, prevent dust release in line with cGMP objectives, minimise manual handling and integrate with the existing production line.

Within 16 working weeks, Entecon delivered a bespoke Automatic Sack Opener capable of opening and emptying up to 300 sacks per hour. The machine includes a top-mounted integrated dust-extraction unit, a 1.5-metre infeed belt conveyor integrated with the existing material-handling system and a waste-bag discharge screw with continuous liner for straightforward disposal.

The installation removed the need to cut flour bags by hand and, according to the case study, reduced manual intervention by 50%. Bag-opening time was reduced by 80%, with the ASO opening and emptying one bag approximately every 12 seconds.

Because opening and emptying take place within a contained system, flour spillage and dust release into the workspace are also controlled. Integration with the factory's existing upstream and downstream equipment has helped remove the original bottleneck and support uninterrupted production.