The GCC food market is expected to witness a strong growth rate of more than 2.3% during 2022-2028, driven by the growth of a young working population. A rise in disposable incomes has also seen consumers becoming more sophisticated and health conscious. This has led to the emergence of more high-quality fresh products, while the greater penetration of modern retail outlets, such as supermarkets and convenience stores which can carry a wider range of refrigerated products, has resulted in a proliferation of value-added products.

Automated solutions for weighing, packing and quality control will play a key role in helping food manufacturers to maximize opportunities in such emerging and growing markets, delivering high levels of operational efficiency and fast throughput while maintaining or increasing quality and safety standards. At Gulfood Manufacturing 2023, Ishida will demonstrate some of the latest solutions from its market-leading equipment portfolio to support customers’ growth plans.

Highlights include the new Ishida QX-500 tray sealer, the advanced Inspira ITPS snack food packing system and examples from the company’s top selling multihead weigher and X-ray inspection system ranges.

The Ishida QX-500, developed following detailed feedback from Ishida’s global customers and partners, is a compact tray sealer that can fit easily into new and existing packing lines and combines excellent seal quality and high throughput with helping companies to meet their sustainability targets. It delivers a 66% increase in cycle speed, a 44% reduction in weight, a 46% reduction in size and a 50% reduction in energy consumption, thus significantly reducing waste and delivering a real step change in productivity.

The Inspira ITPS snacks packing system comprises an Ishida CCW-RV 14-head multihead weigher and Inspira rotary bagmaker, together with a TSC-RS seal tester and DACS-G checkweigher. The fully integrated snack food solution delivers maximum efficiency, reliability and flexibility, offering close-to-zero giveaway and film waste and greater than 99% Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE).

The two state-of-the-art multihead weighers on display demonstrate Ishida’s market leadership in the technology. The recently launched CCW-AS has been designed to offer outstanding weighing performance to further increase OEE, particularly for more challenging applications, while at the same time delivering significant energy reductions.

The 20-head CCW-RV screw feeder model addresses the particular challenges of sticky products, such as meat and poultry, which cannot be easily moved by feeder vibration, providing powerful, controlled and fully automatic weighing at up to 80 weighments per minute.

Ishida’s X-ray inspection systems deliver full peace of mind for manufacturers with their ability to identify a wide variety of foreign bodies and other quality control issues such as broken or missing items, to ensure unrivalled food safety and brand protection.

The IX-GN-5523 on display is ideal for inspecting standard Eurocrates, cases and large items up to 25kg. The X-ray system incorporates Ishida’s patented Genetic Algorithm (GA) technology that enables operators to optimize the machine for greater sensitivity to specific foreign bodies.