The Japanese-owned firm’s award-winning marination line, Ishida Orbicote, was named Innovative Processing System of the Year at the 2017 PPMA Awards, which took place in Birmingham, UK, last month.
It a complex piece of machinery that should enable meat processors to increase production of marinated products, such as barbecue beef or chilli-coated chicken.
Nick Clark, Ishida Europe product manager for screw feed weighers, explained why weighing products before marinating them is a good idea for processors.
Marinating meat mess
“Orbicote has successfully overcome the classic marination problems of waste and mess,” he said.
“The marination process can now be much more effectively and accurately controlled, delivering valuable cost-savings while enabling manufacturers to more easily expand their product ranges and respond flexibly to market demands and opportunities.”
The Ishida Orbicote is designed with 12 mini-drums mounted on interlocking wheels. Here, each piece of meat is individually weighed before being pushed into a drum for marination.
The mini-drums are positioned vertically above the meat packaging line, enabling manufactures that use Orbicote to churn out 55 packs of marinated meat per minute.
Pre-marination weighing is supposed to avoid waste that derives from marinating meat en masse then weighing product afterwards, the business said. It also claimed this process – popular with meat processors – can result in nearly 10% of the marinade being lost.
The Orbicote system also comes equipped with a patented over-or-under weigher to detect and reject out-of-spec meat. This means all the meat marinated should be the same weight.
For users worried about how effective individual marination is, independent tests of the Orbicote found it covered around 95% of the product. A short drop from drum to packaging line helped avoid damage to the product too.
