EUROPASTRY - Testimonial
EUROPASTRY - Testimonial
Europastry, founded 22 years ago by the visionary baker Don Pere Gallès, is now Spain's leading producer of deep frozen bakery products and pastries, with a market share of more than 35%. In recent years, it has also become one of the leading European players in the sector, thanks to the quality of its products and the permanent innovation of its Technical and R&D department, managed by Jordi Caballero.
In order to produce range-topping products that demand an optimal process, the group's Technical Director, Xavi Alonso, selected expert suppliers capable of delivering quality products and maximum system efficiency, while remaining sufficiently available to deliver made-to-measure service. De La Ballina Industrie already supplies Europastry with automatic packaging solutions for 10 years.
DLB: What is the most important thing about your cooperation with DLB?
Jordi Caballero and Xavi Alonso: DLB has been part of our growth for 10 years now, delivering systems to almost every one of the group's sites.
De La Ballina Industrie provides efficient counting, quality control and automatic product packaging solutions. The company has been present from the very start of Europastry, on our Barbera site, through to the most technologically advanced site at Vallmoll, where we make our Gran Reserva bread. We now have 15 DLB packaging lines: two at Barbera, three at Rubí, four at Azuqueca, one at Sarral and five at Vallmoll.
What are your thoughts on your collaboration on the latest production line at Vallmoll, dedicated to the famous Gran Reserva?
DLB has introduced a lot of innovations in the last three years (counting and quality control by 3D vision, increased throughput and efficiency of the lines, robotised box packing), which is why we decided to work with DLB on line N°7, in view of the diversity of the products and the flexibility of the solutions that they demand.
To package our top-of-the-range Gran Reserva products, we opted for a mixed solution that is capable of boxing ovalado or chapata type products with robots, while using a hopper-based system for other products, such as baguettes, half-baguettes and small products.
And what about the collaboration between DLB and Pattyn Packing Lines on this project?
We are quite satisfied with this collaboration. DLB is an expert in product flows, while Pattyn Packing Lines is specialised in the control of bags and boxes. We already used Pattyn machines on certain sites. As far as line N°7 is concerned, each change raised doubts and questions amongst the operators. But after having worked with the new packaging machines, the operators felt it was a positive change. The Ceflex-21 case erector - bag inserter is running well and we have made significant savings by using film on a reel rather than preformed bags. The DS-11 bag sealer is also a good and reliable machine, without being a bottleneck in the line.
