IDM ¦ Technology/IT
Hard labour made easy
DERO GROEP automates the derinding of round cheese
The transfer of cheese from one robot to the
other happens “in the air” – for hygienic reasons.
Even in many advanced cheese dairies which are packing
high-quality cheese in large quantities, derinding natural
ripened cheese is hard manual labour. The removal of
the rind is neccessary before cutting or slicing the cheese.
DERO GROEP has automated this process by the ELTEN/ DER*
200S/2 derinding machine. Two Stäubli six-axis robots are working
”hand in hand” to remove the rind in less than half a minute: a real
milestone in cheese processing.
It takes about two minutes, two strong arms and a skilled
worker to manually remove the natural rind from a round cheese.
Considering that modern cheese-making plants process thousands
of round cheeses each day, it is evident that this task calls for automation.
And it is also evident that the Dutch DERO GROEP is a natural
candidate for developing the right machine for this process.
10 · September/October 2022 ¦ international-dairy.com
The company’s headquarters, employing more than 130 people,
is based in Nieuw Vennep near Amsterdam and not far from Gouda,
the Netherlands’ capital of cheese with its famous cheese market.
The DERO GROEP, under the brand names Dero, Elten and Bosgraaf
offer automated solutions for cheese production, processing, treatment
and packaging. Other sectors for automation include convenience
foods which are handled as carefully (certainly by robots).
Within the portfolio of automated cheese processing machines,
there was a gap which has now been closed. Joop Bouman, Sales
Manager of DERO GROEP: ”Up to now, the majority of companies
– even those that are automated to a high degree – still remove the
rind from their natural aged cheese manually, which is very tough
work, like woodworking. Our goal was to find a solution for automating
this process.”
/international-dairy.com
