12 | packazine Customers & Markets Food and Confectionery

Grupo Siro is renowned across Spain for its pasta, bread, biscuits and other baked goods. The company is one of the largest in the Spanish food industry. Its success story began in 1918, with the establishment of a family-run business called Galletas Siro SA. Today, Grupo Siro has around 3600 employees at 16 locations across Spain. Since 1991, its turnover has increased by a factor of forty. One of the secrets of this success is the intensive food research that Grupo Siro conducts, making it one of the most innovative companies in its sector. Social responsibility is also an integral part of its corporate philosophy; in 2010 the group was rated as one of the five best employers in the Spanish food industry.

Juan Manuel Gonzáles Serna and Lucia Urbán Lopez, the company’s owners, have continuously expanded its product range over the past 20 years and have invested in state-of-the-art production lines. As a result, Grupo Siro offers its customers a wide variety of high-quality products in several price ranges. In 2011, the company decided to extend its product portfolio even further and started production of six types of cereal bars, which are enjoying increasing popularity.

All-in-one solution from BoschFor Luis Manuel Sanz, project engineer at Grupo Siro, entering the new field of bar production provided a major chal-

lenge. From the beginning, Sanz favored an all-in-one solution, to cover both the production and packaging of bars. As Sanz explains, “It was important for us to fully concentrate on exploiting the new business field. In order to reduce the technical complexity of the project, we were looking for a one-stop provider right from the start.” Not only were the production and packaging lines supplied by Bosch, but the experts at the testing plant, or “Technikum”, at the Bosch site in Viersen, Germany, assisted in the devel-opment of the bars themselves. Here, six different bars were created and tested under real production conditions. The results were convincing and pro-

Grupo Siro expands product portfolio

The spanish company exploits a new business field with a modern bar production line from Bosch.

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Flexible and efficient conceptAs the new line needs to produce and package six different sorts of bars, Grupo Siro placed great importance on fast changeover times and easy clean-ing. The production line from Bosch fulfills these requirements, ensuring efficient and hygienic processes. The blender with an integrated cleaning-in-place system (CIP), even allows auto-matic cleaning to take place without affecting the ongoing production. Addi-tionally, an integrated washing system continuously cleans the conveyor belt. Luis Manuel Sanz is very impressed by the excellent working relationships and cooperation fostered between Grupo Siro and Bosch. During the whole course of the mutual project, the

pelled Grupo Siro’s successful entry into the new market segment.

Bundled know-howFor a comprehensive realization of the customer’s specific requirements, Bosch combined technical expertise and solutions from across a number of its facilities. The Bosch site in Viersen supplied the bar production line, which consisted of dosing and dissolving units, a batch cooker for producing the binding agent, plus the forming line for the bar mass. The binding agent and cereals are mixed in a blender and then rolled out flat on a conveyor. After passing a cooling tun-nel, the slab is first cut longitudinally and fanned out, before a cross cutter separates the individual sections into bars. The system can produce up to 500 bars per minute. The finished products are individually packaged on a Pack 401 horizontal flow wrapper, manufactured in Schiedam, Netherlands. And finally, a Presto D2 Delta robot, from Romanel-sur-Laus-anne, Switzerland, places the wrapped bars into display cartons. The machines for erecting and closing the display cartons were also supplied by Bosch.

Spanish agency IMCO and the responsi-ble Project Managers Andreas Miguel and Jörg Schongen from Bosch main-tained continuous contact with Grupo Siro. This was certainly one of the reasons for the rapid project implemen-tation and smooth integration of the line into existing processes. After only five months, the new line went into production and in November 2011, the first bars rolled off the line. Grupo Siro has now arrived in the cereal bar business and Spanish consumers can enjoy six new delicious products.

For more information please contact:

Frank Jansen

Phone: +49 2162 248 452

E-mail: frank.jansen@bosch.com