For more than 100 years, the family-owned Bonduelle company has been devoted to one single and unchanging passion: Vegetables.
Today, the French-based company is one of the major food processors worldwide and is present in more than 80 countries. In a sector where change is an ongoing process and where production methods are controlled ever more stringently, Bonduelle uses its professional knowledge across a range of different types of technologies, including fresh, canned, frozen products and ready meals, and also has become a leader in the fresh-cut market.
Among the company’s 40 processing facilities worldwide (from Brazil to Ukraine, passing through Europe and Canada), there are eight plants completely dedicated to fresh-cut products. The European market for value-added vegetables is currently about $2.9 billion, and has been growing by 10 percent each year, according to the company. At present, Bonduelle is No. 1 in Europe and has 20 percent of the fresh-cut market share, and its fresh vegetables represent 23 percent of the company’s annual sales.
The ‘Fenice’ project
The company’s latest fresh-cut operation is located in the northern Italian town of San Paolo d’Argon. It is the largest plant in Europe dedicated to the production of fresh-cut salad and the biggest completely automated fresh-cut operation in the world, according to the company. It was inaugurated on May 20, 2011. Bonduelle Group Chairman Christophe Bonduelle led the opening ceremony, along with the top management of the company and national authorities.
The new facility replaces the previous one, which was totally destroyed in a fire in February 2008. The same night of the fire, the top management of Bonduelle met and gave birth to the “Fenice” (Phoenix) project. Like the mythical bird reborn from its own ashes to live again, Bonduelle leaders wanted the new plant to stand as a symbol of innovation – more efficient and larger than before.
The whole project represented an investment of $30 million, and employs 250 people. The plant has 13 completely automated processing lines feeding 24 packing lines. It has a production capability of 22,000 tons and represents a unique model of efficiency and sustainability.
To achieve these goals, Bonduelle selected Turatti to design and engineer the entire processing area and manufacture all the processing lines. Turatti is headquartered in Cavarzere, Italy, near Venice, and has North American operations in Yorba Linda, Calif. The company has been the preferred supplier for Bonduelle for more than 40 years, having contributed to the success of the French group worldwide with hundreds of complete processing lines in several plants.
Turatti worked closely with the Bonduelle engineering team and placed emphasis on automation by means of optimizing processing flows, on sustainability by improving the environmental conditions of the critical areas, and on energy efficiency. Focus also was centered on solutions that address the challenges of food safety, product quality and shelf life.
The first challenge was to design a system highly suitable to process delicate leafy salad vegetables. The company uses Italian, greenhouse-grown baby leaves that are extremely fragile and delicate.
Since the fresh produce needs to be handled with the utmost care, the team focused on reducing the transition points by obtaining highly computerized, efficient and spotlessly clean processing lines. Throughout the facility, the flow of baby leaves is gently accelerated and decelerated according to the requirements of the weighting-packaging systems. In the San Paolo operation, conveyors are no longer mere lettuce handlers, but flexible, continuous weighting belts wired for the computer age that can connect to the facility’s network and adjust in real time to the product flow. Hence, both the mechanical and the electrical worlds collide in the Bonduelle plant in order to avoid peaks and lack of product, always operating the lines with a continuous stream of baby leaves or leafy items. Only a few operators are needed in the facility, which has the capacity to deliver 115 million bags of fresh-cut product each year.
Flexibility also was a key factor during the design phase. Each one of the automated processing lines can feed three different packaging units, avoiding downtimes in case of replacement of the film or in breakdown of the multi-head units.
The trimming areas are equipped with sophisticated weighting-dosing belts that allow several product blends. All the lines are equipped with optical sorters that are utilized in the detection and removal of foreign material and product defects from a stream of fresh-cut product.
Focus on food safety
During processing, the focus on quality and food safety is never lost; especially on a critical area of any produce preparation like washing (having raw fresh salad sold as ready-to-eat). In the Bonduelle facility, each one of the 13 processing lines features a washing system made of three separate washing stages. This triple wash utilizes three last-generation flotation tanks featuring an integrated air injection system that enables a thorough cleaning action without damaging the tender baby leaves.
The efficiency in washing has also been coupled with a considerable reduction of the water utilization through a sophisticated filtration system. Simultaneously, key performance indicators are constantly monitored to quantify, track and reduce water consumption.
“The new configuration has dramatically reduced water usage to a fraction of what we were using, and has a greater efficacy in the treatment of bacteria in water through a series of peculiar solutions,” said Antonio Salvatore, the plant’s director.
The San Paolo plant was designed to meet sustainable development criteria and provides a distinct indication of the group’s commitment to being environmentally friendly. Bonduelle has demonstrated its dedication to preserving natural resources not only in the washing lines and through major reductions in energy consumption, but also with a cutting-edge waste management system.
The plant’s waste removal system automatically evacuates the trimmed core and outer leaves from the plant rapidly and efficiently, offering an efficient and environment friendly waterless solution. Reduced water use is also an important issue, because water cleanliness, chemical requirements and access rights have become industry hot buttons in recent years, as water needs to be treated and discharged in dedicated areas.
Food safety at the plant has always been a top priority, and Bonduelle continues to stay at the forefront of safety. Stringent quality-control procedures are followed throughout the production process and equipment is designed with hygienic goals in mind. In addition to its traceability, HACCP and monitoring programs for temperature and chlorine levels, the company invests in employee training.
Antonio Turatti, president of the Turatti Group, said that the integrated processing lines were designed and manufactured to provide maximum quality in the final product.
“Through a strict cooperation with Bonduelle, we are proud to have reached our goal with an end result that epitomizes the most advanced and innovative engineering trends of our day,” he said.
As a result of the collaboration with Turatti, Bonduelle officials say they now rely on a high-performance production facility in the most populated part of the country, allowing it to reinforce its leading position on the market for the Bonduelle brand and its distributors’ brands.