KRONEN Potato Processing Line to Reach Argentinian Retailer Soon

Equipment manufacturer KRONEN has recently reached an important milestone on a project it is currently implementing, namely a complete processing line designated for Argentina’s biggest supermarket chain, COTO C.I.C.S.A., before shipping it overseas.

According to a company press release, KRONEN, together with its official sales representative in Argentina, Alejandro Nowak, has been collaborating closely with a team of COTO representatives, throughout the duration of the project.

The processing line will be used to produce cubes, strips or slices of different vegetables as e.g. potatoes or carrots and ready-to-serve salad, all products packed in packages for distribution to the restaurants.

The processing line consists of: a potato water bunker belt, two PL 40K potato peeling machines, a roller sorting table, a conveyor belt, a KUJ V cube, strip and slice cutting machine, a GS 10-2 belt cutting machine with a trimming table on one side and a conveyor belt at the other, a GEWA 2600V ECO washing machine which leads to a K650 drying system and ultimately to a GKS UP 500 packaging machine integrated in a gantry with a weighing system. The different modules of the line can also be operated individually, allowing for great flexibility and various uses.

Originally a butchery with a growing number of branches in the 1970s in Buenos Aires, COTO has evolved over the last decades to become Argentina´s largest domestic supermarket retailer, after opening the first store in 1987. Today COTO operates more than 120 branches of supermarkets, hypermarkets and shopping centers whose product range consist of many home brands and which are supplied by own slaughterhouses, a distribution and production center of 110.000sqm and a large logistics fleet.

As the retailers’ business has grown, so has the number of restaurants it owns, thus explaining the need to increase the ready-to-cook range of ingredients. The company decided to create a central production plant, to facilitate quality control and ensure a consistent quality of the meals in all of its restaurants. Furthermore, by implementing the different machines included in the line, many processes can be automated. The operation of the line only requires very few employees and its different modules guarantee a maximum of flexibility.

KRONEN offered the complete solution for the whole process that COTO wanted to automate, as well as durable machines and its longstanding experience.