Evolution of the treatment line.

This week, our founder and CEO Maro Dedel once again took a group of colleagues on a DERO GROEP BOSS day. Visiting 7 different locations with our cheese treatment lines, the evolution of our treatment lines became quite visible.

Whereas during the previous BOSS day the focus was mainly on robotics, now it was all about cheese. And especially about cheese treatment! Maro took the interested colleagues on this day to a total of six different customers in the area of Woerden and Bodegraven (The Netherlands), where they could take a closer look at various treatment lines. The oldest line visited can be found at Treur Kaas in Woerden. This line was built some 30 years ago and is still operational! A visit was also paid to Wijngaard Kaas, where the line has been running since 2000.

The colleagues who joined the BOSS day.

Compact line
Furthermore, the first ever compact line we delivered was visited. This is a robot treatment line with our patented principle where the robot also turns the cheeses. This line, which now belongs to Vergeer Holland, has been treating almost 2.000 cheeses per hour on a floor space of less than 100 square metres for 18 years.

Lastly, a visit to our newest model cheese treatment line could not be missed, of course. And it just so happens that this one is also installed at Vergeer.

Vergeer Holland 
Family company Vergeer Holland is among the largest, innovative cheese processors in the world. At their processing site in Bodegraven, cheese is treated, cut and packaged. This site was built in 2020 with the aim of automating as much as possible, with as little manual handling as possible. Hence, the cheese is processed here fully automatically, from input to pallet, with minimal staffing. Besides an infeed line, several cheese supply systems and cheese pre-processing machines, we also supplied a state-of-the-art high speed cheese treatment line at this facility. 

De latest cheese treatment line at Vergeer Holland.

High speed cheese treatment line
The high speed cheese treatment line is an automatically operating line for turning, checking and plasticising cheese and cleaning shelves. This line at Vergeer has a capacity of more than 800 shelves per hour! This has never been done before.

Supply and removal of the cheese boxes from and to the cheese storage (for ripening) goes fully automatically. For this purpose, Viscon supplied a fully automated storage system for both natural and foil cheese. Inspection of the cheese also goes fully automatically. For this, we integrated a vision system from DVC into the line. So the cooperation between DVC Machinevision and DERO GROEP started thanks to Vergeer.

Development
The development of our different machines and lines for the treatment of cheese and shelves over the years was well visible during this BOSS day. You see the technologies used changing, which means the lines do essentially the same thing but the capacity is getting higher and the maintenance intensity lower. Through improved hygienic design and automatic cleaning, for example. "An interesting day where we had a close look at different treatment lines and were able to learn a lot from Maro and from each other. So definitely successful!", says colleague Joerien.

// P. Mulder - Synergy Food  //