Matrix and Marjon Specialty Foods Team Up to Fill Healthy Snacks for Schools

July 31, 2024|Filling & Form/Fill/Seal, Food, Machinery, News & Headlines

One of the Team

Getting produce from the field to the table and all the steps in between is almost never an individual effort. The time and processes required to get fresh fruits and vegetables delivered across the country before spoiling requires the work of many groups, including full-service processing facilities like Marjon Specialty Foods.

This team mentality also extends to Marjon’s culture. The Plant City, Florida based operation is run by husband-and-wife duo Randy and Kelly Abram. Marjon Foods’ longstanding commitment to food safety has been recognized through the receipt of the SQF Certification, which showcases dedication to a culture of food safety and operation excellence in food safety management. From a personnel standpoint, Randy and Kelly are proud to promote personal growth for all employees by celebrating and nurturing each one’s individual skillset for the betterment of both the person and the overall operation.

With such an emphasis on harmony and synergy, Marjon needed its vertical form fill seal (VFFS) machines to hold their own as components in a well-oiled machine. This is what brought them to Matrix.

Delivering Speed

Marjon customers place their orders between 5 a.m. and noon each day. The product is then cut fresh, packaged, and sent out on trucks by 9 p.m. for next-day delivery, with most destined for schools across Florida and Alabama. For an operation to sustain that level of speed in its turnaround time, every part of the line from the staff to the machinery needs to maintain the highest level of efficiency.

Matrix worked with Marjon Foods to install a complete bagging solution that included a mix of Mercury and MVC-300 VFFS machines, as well as Yamato scales for accuracy, scale platforms, printers, labelers, and other related equipment to bag the high volume of fruit and vegetable products that go through the facility daily. These solutions proved to be the best choice for this application due to both the packaging rate and food-safe accuracy they provide. The Mercury can process up to 140 bags per minute and is known for its easy operation and quick changeovers. It can accommodate bag widths between 2.5” and 11”, and bag lengths between 3” and 15”. The Mercury is a great cost-effective produce packaging solution as it features a small footprint, stainless-steel frame, automatic film tracking, a registered film sensor, and more.

The MVC-300 uses a continuous-motion, high-speed jaw system that is unique from other VFFS machines because the film never stops. The jaw system cuts the film and provides just enough dwell time for the three bag seams to properly seal. This innovative feature allows users to achieve higher fill rates for produce, making the MVC-300 Matrix’s most advanced VFFS machine.

In addition to the speed with which the products can be packaged, changeover between different product types on Matrix machines is quick and seamless. Changeover often means downtime, as the machines need to adjust from the packaging recipe of one product to another. However, both the Mercury and MVC-300 allow users to preprogram machine settings, making shifts to new products as easy as pressing a button.

“We have constant changeout throughout the day. We switch often between blueberries to watermelon to apple slices,” Randy Abram said. “With our Matrix machines, these changes are easy to make. You can just choose a recipe and load product from there.”

“One of the things produce processors run into is changeover time and that equates to machine downtime,” said Richard Carlton, Regional Sales Manager, Matrix. “Being able to have the preset recipes in the HMI allows operators to quickly select a different product. All the machine settings are already there. The faster they can change from product A to product B means more product out the door.”

Earning Trust

The primary recipients of produce packaged in Marjon facilities are children, with roughly 100,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables processed for schools every day. While trust is always important between business partners, packaging food that is served to children requires a mutual understanding that perfection is the minimum standard.

“The seal is what makes the package,” Randy Abram said. “If they get to their destination broken open, they get sent back. Matrix machines do well with ensuring that seal is solid and true.”

Marjon’s trust in Matrix is also bolstered by the ease of doing business with them.

“From my point of view as an administrator, Matrix has always been there when we needed them,” said Kelly Abram. “Whether it’s a new piece of equipment or a repair when a machine is down, they’ve always given us the support we need so we don’t have downtime. We could not do it without Matrix equipment.”