R-T-E, RMH and AEW Delford Systems
A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS
RMH Foods have become a ‘state of the art’,
manufacturer of some of the world’s best ready meals, thanks to
foresight, hard work and some pretty clever portion control technology
from AEW Delford Systems.
Much has been written about RMH Foods, the brainchild and ‘dream
coming true’ of Jonathon Rocke. RMH Foods’ rapid and continuing
success is owed to the creation and ongoing development of the Quick
N’ Easy range of ‘heat and eat’ ready meals which the
company sells direct to retailers, food service outlets and, via mail
order, to consumers across the USA. The award winning range includes
dishes like Pork Roast – a cooked pork joint with gravy, Meat Loaf
in gravy, Beef Roast with a bourbon sauce, and Chicken with tequila sauce.
Jon Rocke’s grandfather, Jesse, founded Rocke’s Cold Storage
in 1937 and built a firebrick smokehouse, which is still in use today,
to produce delicious hickory smoked hams, turkeys and bacon. Jon’s
father, Wayne, took over in 1960 and, with that same Rocke creativity,
created and developed the unique retail store known as Rocke’s
Meating Haus. That creative gene has obviously passed down to Jon who,
in the early ‘90s identified the changing American lifestyle and
the growing trend in ready meals. Rocke’s Meating Haus then began
its transformation from small, traditional meat processor to major Food
Processor and in 2001, with a great deal of help from newly acquired
parent and partner company, Smithfield Foods, moved into an all new,
purpose built plant in the company’s home town of Morton, Illinois.
From dream to reality
Having great ideas and a super, modern production plant is all very well,
but if you’re going to efficiently produce high quality product
day in, day out, with minimal waste, you need the very best production
systems and equipment. To produce portion controlled meals, complete
with sauces or gravies, from non whole muscle raw material is quite a
challenge but Jonathon turned to some old friends to help him turn his
bold and ambitious production concept into reality.
Enter Adrian Allcroft from Delford Sortaweigh’s Russellville, Ar.,
office who, along with Ben Elbert, Operations Manager at RMH Foods and
colleagues from AEW Delford Systems in Chicago and Harwich, England,
designed, manufactured and installed the whole production system from
scratch.
“
It all started with Jonathon’s and Ben’s’ concept of
a complete ready meals production line with accurate weight control right
the way through from slicing to packing. They asked us to come up with
the goods and we did – inside 14 months,” said Allcroft.
The main production area has two separate, self contained areas for raw
and cooked product. The raw area features 3 production lines, one of
which produces packs from pre-processed raw material, e.g. pre-graded
chicken breast or meatloaf. The chicken breast is tumbled with spices
and flavourings in a dry marinade before it’s fed in twos into
the weight control system. The meatloaf is made in-house and portioned
through a fixed weight extruder. The other two lines are also linked
to the portion control system.
Primal to pack
Fresh Primals are prepared on a Delford Sortaweigh supplied trimming
line prior to being continuously conveyed through an AEW Delford Systems SmartSlice
Vision portion control slicer. The sliced weight
controlled portions are tumbled in a dry marinade prior to grading (Sortaweigh
GS900) and then checkweighed by a Sortaweigh
G2200 before being fed into
the weight control system. Any offweights are reprocessed and fed back
into the system to minimise wastage and giveaway.
Although both production lines are fed from a single source, they each
have their own weight control system to ensure that overpacking is minimised
and the final weight of the finished package containing meat, gravy or
sauce is as declared on the label.
The meat portions are checkweighed by a G2200 checkweigher to make sure
they fall within correct, set weight limits. They are then tracked by
the checkweigher and, after being manually loaded into the packaging
machine, arrive under the liquid dosing heads in the right sequence where
the correct amount of sauce is added to the pouches to achieve a net
weight pack.
As far as we know, this system, developed by RMH and AEW Delford Systems,
is unique.
Cooked Product Area
Sealed packs are placed in racks and cooked before being held in a cold
store from which they are brought into the “cooked” production
area. The packs are then put into trays, checkweighed and passed through
a Ceia metal detector prior to being manually inserted into sleeves for
heat shrinking and trimming. A Delford Concept 500 label applicator on
the transfer conveyor applies any required additional “flash” information
labels that may be required. The sleeved trays are then boxed in groups
of four or eight.
The boxes are sealed, checkweighed and then labelled with product information,
batch codes, time, date and weight details which are sourced from a central
PC that operates Delford Sortaweigh’s UMACS software – developed
specifically for this purpose.
Other machines in the system are also linked to the central PC to enable
full running analysis, monitoring and production management.
Very high standards of hygiene
It comes as no surprise to learn that the whole building is crammed with
innovations, like stainless steel walls and ceilings, five standard microprocessor
controlled steam box ovens and total segregation of cooked and raw processing
operations.
There are separate locker rooms, entrances, lunch and rest rooms with
no personnel access to the R-T-E (ready to eat) production area other
than through a gowning room where a full wash down is required. The whole
R-T-E room has its own positive airflow system – just like any
other clean room area – and visitors can only view processing from
spacious second floor viewing windows.
Outstanding output – and that’s just the start
Production levels of entrée meals at the new Morton plant already
exceed expectations and all systems are very much go!
Onweight packs are, of course, the daily norm because giveaway is just
not tolerated at a plant as advanced as this with a weekly capacity of
500,000lbs that’s set to double in two years. Ben Elbert is the
man responsible for maintaining these high standards for which he relies
to a great extent on AEW Delford technology.
“
Every day the system delivers low levels of overpack with a high percentage
of on-weights to give us truly minimal giveaway. These are the two things
that have contributed most towards payback on our investment,” said
Ben. This astounding productivity will soon be yet further improved with
the purchase of a Delford Sortaweigh Optimiser and CT60
sleever.
Performance like this from a ‘virgin’ plant is surely outstanding
and a tribute to the RMH and AEW Delford teams. This is only the tip
of a very large iceberg for the Mortonians who expend considerable energy
on improving and refining their products as well as creating new ones
that should help them increase their existing market share and take advantage
of new opportunities like the growing, smaller private label market.
“
I see a potential for something unusual, such as low volume, high margin
exotic game or signature products for food service,” said an enthusiastic
Jonathon Rocke.
Traditional RMH products like hams, steaks and sausage, will continue
to be manufactured with the famous smokehouse continuing to play an important
role in RMH’s future which is looking very bright, thanks to a
creative, dedicated and very able management team with whom we are very
pleased to be involved.
Partners
The team sets about the continuing quest for perfection with creative
flair, expertise and a total dedication to quality. We enjoy getting
caught up in this too, as the technical challenges become correspondingly
greater. As Ben Elbert so kindly puts it, “AEW Delford is always
willing to go that extra mile to give us the service we demand. They’re
not just suppliers, they’re partners.” Watch this space!
www.ilovemeat.com
