The premier source for authentic latino cuisine, familyowned goya foods was established in 1936 in lower manhattan, ny, by don prudencio unanue and his wife, carolina, both from spain, as a distributor of olives, olive oil, and sardines.
Today, the company is the largest hispanicowned food company in the united states, with 16 facilities in the u.s., puerto rico, the dominican republic, and spain, and a product line of 2,000 skus. One of the secrets to goya&rsquos success, unanue reveals, is the company&rsquos investment in equipment and automation. &ldquowe have very automated facilities,&rdquo he says. &ldquoour products are not necessarily the lowest price out there, but quality and consistency are extremely important to us. In order to be competitive, we have always invested in equipment and machinery. It&rsquos a constant thing, a neverending aspect of our business.&rdquo last year, goya foods of florida moved one of its two floridabased distribution centers, along with its florida drybean packing operations, from a 175,000sqft facility in doral, fl, to a new, 338,000sqft building in miami, leaving its spicepacking operation in doral. Included in the technology transferred to the new facility were three packaging lines that,
when purchased for doral several years ago, replaced goya&rsquos allmanual endofline operations with automated equipment, with the exception of palletizing. Automated checkweighing, case erecting, case packing, and case sealing, along with stateoftheart vertical formfillseal equipment, have allowed the facility to eliminate wasted product and move from line speeds of 65 bagsmin up to 92 bpm. Keeping a close eye on customer movement beans&mdashboth dry and canned&mdashare one of goya&rsquos biggest sellers and one of the products for which the company is most well recognized.
Goya packs dry beans in seven of its 16 distribution facilities, and produces canned beans in three of the operations. Unanue says that the company&rsquos strategy of delivering directly to stores, rather than to warehouses, has greatly contributed to its growth by allowing it to stay on top of the changing demographics for its products. Goya broke ground on the new miami facility in january 2010 to accommodate the company&rsquos growth in florida, driven both by new people coming into the area and by consumers&rsquo growing willingness to try new foods and flavors.
Says goya foods of florida director of operations, development, and manufacturing angel portuondo, &ldquoour sales have been growing every year. Many of those years we were running doubledigit growth, and the old facility wasn&rsquot able to keep up with the demand.&rdquo the new miami facility serves southern florida, from key west north to sarasota and port st. Lucie an orlando distribution center serves the rest of the state. The new operation, which represents a 44 million investment, was constructed to meet goya&rsquos existing sales, while allowing for future expansion.
The facility was built with 42fthigh ceilings to allow a mezzanine level to be added, and the building is situated next to 14 acres that can accommodate another 335,000sqft facility. The nine dock doors in doral were expanded to 28 in miami, with room for 12 more.speed and accuracy essential in the drybean packing room, three packaging lines produce up to 1 million cases of beans per year over one shift, with the ability to expand to 3 million. Sixtysix skus of beans are filled in 12, 14, and 24oz, and 4lb pillowstyle bags. The primary packagingline equipment&mdashfrom hayssen packaging technologies, mettler toledo, wexxar, blueprint automation, and m.w. Waldrop&mdashwas chosen by goya to ensure bagweight accuracy, eliminate product waste, and increase productivity. Explains unanue, &ldquowe were having trouble with speeds, we were having trouble with accuracy in our fills, and we had too many people in the bean room.
The whole operation was not efficient.&rdquo confirms portuondo, &ldquowe had huge yields, wasted product.&rdquo to address product waste, goya added a mettler toledo hi speed checkmate 2 inline checkweigher to each of the three lines. The units weigh every bag individually for proper fill weight, rejecting all bags that are underweight and all that are overweight by 2 or more. &ldquothe checkweighers help us reduce the yield and waste to under two percent,&rdquo portuondo says, &ldquowhereas before, we had more than fivepercent waste. Plus, now we can absolutely guarantee that no underweight bag goes to market.&rdquo to address speed, goya selected the hayssen technologies ultima st intermittentmotion vffs machine, which has a toprated output of 100 bpm. At goya, line 1 alternates between 24oz and 4lb bags lines 2 and 3 handle 12 and 14oz bag sizes. According to portuondo, the baggers run at speeds from 90 to 92 bpm for the smaller sizes at 55 bpm for the larger sizes.
Compared with the speeds formerly achieved by goya using its old equipment, the higher output of the new machines translates to an extra 500 cases per line, per shift. With the new equipment also came better planning, portuondo adds, which also facilitated productivity. Previously, the facility might change over a packing line seven to eight times in one day, &ldquoso productivity and efficiency were down the tubes,&rdquo he says. Now, goya tries to schedule one item per line per day. &ldquoif it&rsquos a slowerselling bean, we try never to have more than three changeovers in one day,&rdquo he says. Changeover from one bean variety to another in the same package size is a 15 to 30min process and involves cleanup of the machines. Changing from a 12 to a 14oz bag is a onehour job, requiring each machine on the line to be changed over.
The most timeintensive changeover is when goya moves from a 24oz to a 4lb bag. &ldquothat&rsquos a threehour changeover because we have to use different sealing jaws for the different materials that we use to package the beans,&rdquo says portuondo. Twelve, 14, and 24oz bags are made from coextruded polypropylene, while 4lb bags are polyethylene. Both are supplied by sunpak caribe, inc. 8172518200. Packingroom congestion was alleviated by increased automation. Whereas before, one operator was needed to run the bagging machine, one to erect cases, one to fill cases, and one to seal cases, along with one operator to troubleshoot, now just one operator is required to run an entire line. With the arrival of more automated machinery, unanue says he also moved existing packingroom operators to other locations in the plant, hiring new operators with greater technical skills to run the lines. &ldquoa lot of this equipment has software, and we needed people who were a little bit more technical, or at least who were not afraid of technology.&rdquo the bean packaging process drybean packaging begins when 2,200lb totes of cleaned, polished beans are dumped into a hopper, with a capacity of 5,500 lb. Beans fall through a double sifter from eriez at the bottom of the hopper, where particles larger and smaller than the beans are removed as waste. A bucket elevator from frazier & son the company supplies all elevators and conveyors on the line then carries the beans to the packing line. At the hayssen vffs machine, a volumetric feeder measures out the appropriate amount of beans, which are dumped into the formed bags. Prior to forming, bag rollstock is printed by a videojet dataflex plus thermal transfer overprinter with the manufacturing date, bestby date, and expiration date. After bagging, a flipper mechanism designed by blueprint flips bags over so that the front of the bag is face up on the conveyor. These bags are conveyed over the checkweigher to ensure an accurate fill weight, after which they are carried to a rotary gate packer from blueprint. The case packer counts out groups of three bags using an electronic counter and then drops them into a waiting case below. Each time three bags are released into the case, it is shaken in a backandforth motion to settle the products. Prior to being packed, cases are erected automatically by a wexxar silver 615t case erector. Filled cases advance to a waldrop case sealer where they are taped closed and then carried to the end of the line to be manually palletized. Goya does not stretch wrap its pallets, as it later assembles mixed pallets for direct delivery to stores. When goya purchased its three new packaging lines, it also brought case printing inhouse. The company uses an iconotech digital case printer to print all of the cases for its drybean products. &ldquowith 66 skus, our inventory levels were huge before with preprinted cases,&rdquo says portuondo. &ldquobringing case printing inhouse, we have realized savings with reduced inventory and the cost of boxes. The bar codes are now fresh and clear. We used to have 60 percent to 70 percent readability of our bar codes, now we have 99 percent readability.&rdquo unrivalled uptime due to a proactive approach to maintenance and spareparts replacement, portuondo says that goya foods of florida&rsquos doralmiami operations have not had one hour of lost time due to machine problems since the new equipment was installed. &ldquowe have a mechanic on staff who does preventative maintenance, so we are trying to stay ahead of the machines rather than behind them repairing,&rdquo he says. With such impressive efficiency and productivity, goya is well positioned to meet future growth in its dry bean business.
