The Client: B-YOU (Italian Balance Ltd)
is a food company that produces and delivers fresh macro-balanced, ready to eat meals under the brand name B-YOU.
Based at Now Food, the business incubator at the University of Chester, where it also has its manufacturing centre this new start up business is growing fast.
The Challenge: Start Up Business
As a new start up business it can be difficult to source and fund machinery but luckily for Italian Balance, Packaging Automation had already installed a tray sealer at NowFood to support innovation, development and growth in the food sector.
Additionally, Italian Balance were able to take full advantage of the PA Test Kitchen for shelf life and gas flushing trials to ensure they had the best packaging solution possible for their product.
The Solution: Eclipse 182 Semi Automation Tray Sealer
Packaging Automation were happy to support NowFood at the University of Chester and installed the tray sealer for use by food business at the University.
The Eclipse 182 is a semi-automatic, two station, rotary table tray sealer with great outputs, perfect for start-up businesses. Dependant on the tray size and packing mode it can seal up to four packs at a time giving a maximum output of 40 packs per minute
The Result: Maximum efficiency and outputs
The Eclipse 182 has allowed Italian Balance to maximise output as they establish the brand and grow the business. The support of the PA Test Kitchen has helped them to obtain maximum shelf life for their product which is now also going into workplace vending machines.
Claudio Gavillucci, B-YOU co-founder and ex-Italian Serie A referee said:
“Thanks to the Eclipse 182, we were able to close the circle and develop a high-end product suitable for both the B2B and B2C markets, which was our goal since the beginning of our venture.
By moving forward, Packaging Automation also supported us in our R&D process, offering free consulting when we needed to explore different solutions/technologies and connections to the right people/partners (tray and packaging suppliers). Today we are still using the Eclipse 182 to gas seal our products in our production centre at Nowfood and we’re very happy with it: this technology allows us to offer quality restaurant freshly hand-made Italian meals, ready to eat and with a shelf life of 14 days certified by the laboratories of the University of Chester.
The prolonged shelf life compared to the 3-5 days a fresh meal normally expires on average, was pivotal to acquire new clients within the wholesale and vending industry and to start our new smart fridge project, which we’re now operating under the Go-Deli trading brand
Go-Deli is a healthy-only vending service that provides a wide range of fresh, healthy, organic products via an high-tech smart fridge solution. The fridge can be a valuable service for both the private and public sector, operating 24/7 and very easy to use with its contactless payments (either via the Fridge-App and/or any debit/credit card). The handle is also sanitised with UV light after every use to suit the latest anti-covid hygiene rules.
So with all the above said, I’d like to thank PA Automation and its people for the great support and professional service provided, which is certainly the foundation of durable and consistent relation between business in the foreseeable future.”