NI egg packer builds fully automated plant

Northern Ireland packer Ballygarvey Eggs has invested in a new automated plant that the firm says will allow it to better meet larger and more complex orders.

It previously packed eggs by hand at an existing site 5km from the new one, and called its installation “one of the most state of art in the country”.

Balleygarvey Eggs has a flock of 840,000 free-range and colony hens and supplies supermarkets and foodservice throughout the UK and Ireland.

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Managing director Mark Davison said: “The company is continually expanding so we designed and built a new packing plant just 5km away from the original unit.

“While this site would remain, manual handling small volume lines, we wanted the new site to be a fully automated state-of-the-art egg packing plant to deal with the number of variations in packs for our larger customers.”

The new build has been kitted out with a bespoke random case erector from machinery outfit Endoline. It is an automated line that can process and seal 25 different configurations of egg boxes at high speeds.

Cases are packed into egg boxes by Moba systems, and the new operation can process 126,000 eggs an hour at full capacity.