Counting peas made easy

At Amidori winweb-food optimizes the flow of goods for a plant-based food product

Water, pea protein isolate and pea fibers, spices and spice extracts, rapeseed oil, oat flour, potato starch and salt: This is Midori, a plant-based food without soy. Its production is managed by the protein producer Amidori from goods receipt to shipping with winweb-food.

Together with the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging in Munich, Friedrich Büse developed a method for producing plant-based foods. In 2015, the trained butcher and chef, whose parents ran their own butcher's shop, then founded the company Amidori with the Wedel family, who were friends of his, and had modern production facilities built at two locations in Wals-Siezenheim near Salzburg and in Stegaurach near Bamberg. Winweb Informationstechnologie GmbH, which develops industry-specific ERP software for the food sector and especially for the meat industry, was involved fairly quickly.

Amidori has similar production steps and Policies for example for Traceability like a meat processing company. “Therefore it was not so difficult for us to adapt to Amidori’s special requirements”, says Winweb managing director Willi von Berg.
First, the raw materials are ordered in winweb-food by employees in Stegaurach depending on the order situation. In the Production in Austrian Wals the ordered ingredients are then delivered from all over Europe, checked for quantity and quality, in Goods receipt posted and with a Batch number provided. In the next step, the protein powder, which has so far been obtained mainly from peas, is matched to the Recipes weighed in the ERP system: with starch powder, various spices and, depending on customer requirements, also with gluten.

If the weighed content does not match the weight stored in the system, winweb-food reports an error. If both match, all ingredients are mixed in a mixer, weighed into Big Packs and provided with a loop label. In front of the extruder, the Big Packs are then registered again in the system and the mass is extracted in order to be processed with oil and water using pressure and heat. After cooling, pre-cut, natural products are cut from the raw material as a strand or slab, packaged, assembled on pallets, reported as finished in the system and chilled or frozen. Bulk consumer quantities are packaged directly in Wals in Big Packs of 200 kg on pallets and delivered deep-frozen to various end customers. The quantity requested by the German site in Stegaurach is delivered just in time by a freight forwarder in order toCustomer ordersto be able to process appropriately.
In Stegaurach, all incoming goods are recorded in the system upon delivery and posted to the corresponding storage. Afterwards, production orders are created based on stored recipes, which are recorded in goods preparation, posted in daily batches, and made available for further processing in E2 boxes or rotating stack boxes. At the beginning and end of each process, the goods are weighed again and labels are printed to precisely identify the contents of each box. In production, the raw material is therefore recorded with a scanner and allocated to the various Production lines booked, at the end of which various variants were then created: finely cut, mince-like Midori, “pulled” Midori, marinated products, Midori in strips, breaded or fried. “We process Midori exactly as our customers want it, and therefore have to be very flexible”, explains Christian Wicht, Head of Production, Engineering & IT. At the same time, Amidori produces on an industrial scale and naturally has toTraceabilityensure. In the ERP system, each individual production step is therefore registered beforehand and afterwards marked as completed. Since some customers come from Scandinavia, Amidori can present the IFS Food and the BRC certificate – a requirement of the international clientele.

The finished goods are weighed and labeled again. In the clean room, which can only be entered through two airlocks, the finished Midori is packed via a packaging line into different thermoformed trays depending on the product, onto which the batch number and the best-before date are printed with a printer. As is also common in meat processing plants, the finished product is checked by a metal detector and weighed once again. If there are no complaints, cardboard sleeves from winweb-food are labeled according to customer requirements and placed by hand around the thermoformed trays. The finished packages are also provided with a carton label and packed onto pallets. Due to the special customer requirements, the single-variety and single-batch pallets are provided with NVE labels, stored or shipped directly.
According to Christian Wicht, Amidori was able to rely on comprehensive support from Winweb during the implementation and the subsequent adaptation of our processes. However, the future-oriented analyses would have to be improved next, because when it comes to process and quantity planning, his company has significantly more requirements and more complex processes than a meat processing company.

Amidori Food Company GmbH & Co. KG was founded in April 2015 by former butcher and trained chef Friedrich Büse and the Wedel family, who are friends, in Stegaurach near Bamberg. Under the name Midori, the company produces an alternative to meat products from protein-rich raw materials such as legumes and grains. Amidori currently employs around 130 people at two locations. In 2019, the company plans to offer its products for the first time in the fresh food counters of various retailers in Europe

www.amidori.com
www.winweb.de