A Story of Successful Business Growth in China

After decades of aggressive growth strategy, Sunner has moved into new market contexts that place new demands on processing.

Quality management to ensure growth

As a long-term strategic partner for some of the world’s biggest food service chains, Sunner focuses  on product quality and production consistency. Their advanced quality management allows them to supply multinational retailers, the fast-food industry and restaurant chains, and their commitment to animal welfare and food safety enable exports to markets like the US, Japan, and South Korea.

Protecting animal welfare to optimize quality

Good animal welfare practices will increase meat quality. To avoid bird damages during loading and transport, Sunner uses the UniLoad live bird handling system that offers unsurpassed animal welfare practices. The system allows for fast and easy loading into transport drawers designed to consider animal welfare: good airflow, correct headspace and safe foot grip.

At the plant, the full drawers travel through a controlled atmosphere stunning system that gradually induces the birds to unconsciousness using CO2. CO2 stunning reduces bird stress, with fewer injuries as a result.

Efficient feather removal

Sunner’s desire to improve product quality makes them open to testing new production technologies. We collaborated with Sunner on the further development of the Turbo Scalder 1070 - a scalding technology that offers the highest heat transfer rate to the follicles while being gentle to skin and breast meat. The Chinese BAADER crew tested the machine at Sunner’s processing plant in Pucheng, and it showed clear positive results. The combination of effectively loosened feathers and highly adjustable picking machines now allows Sunner to remove feathers without aggressive picking that can damage quality.

Automation to keep growing

As part of their growth strategy, Sunner is establishing a new poultry processing plant in Guanze. The new plant includes two processing lines, each running 13,500 birds per hour and with minimum manual product handling.

Birds stay in the UniLoad drawers from catching to shackling. After shackling, no manual interference is needed through killing, evisceration, cut-up and breast filleting. The latest BAADER technology ensures the highest processing quality and food safety.

Sunner uses the anatomical wing cutting modules on the ProFlex cut-up system to produce segmented wing products, thereby adding value to the wings. The wing modules use a patented processing technology that ensures correct positioning of each wing and highly precise cutting. The special Neck Cutter on the ProFlex Cut-Up system can be adjusted to perform a deep cut between the shoulders to meet the demand for long necks in China.

Sunner has invested in automatic breast filleting lines to keep up with the increasing demand for convenience products and to gain labour independence in another wise labour heavy filleting process. Six new Breast Cap Deboners 660 will help the company to deliver the best fillet quality while intelligent product measuring and computer-controlled cutting tools obtain high yield.

Customized After Sales Support

BAADER has been in China for more than 35 years and has a strong after sales set-up that supports customers in their daily processing. As part of our collaboration with Sunner, BAADER customized a service agreement that provides instant support from experienced service technicians and regular maintenance visits. We placed an equipped service container at Sunner’s processing plant for efficient working conditions and fast repair times. The containers also serve as training facilities for the customer’s employees.

About Sunner

Fujian Sunner Development Co., Ltd was founded by Mr Fu Guangming in 1985 in the northwestern Fujian province of China. Today, Sunner is managed by Ms Fu Fenfang, who has continued the rapid business development. Sunner’s processing capacity was 510 million chickens in 2020, and they plan to reach 1 billion in the next five years. The partnership between Sunner and BAADER (former LINCO Food Systems A/S) started in 1999 with the design and installation of a processing plant in Guangze in the Fujian province. Since then, Sunner implemented 17 BAADER poultry processing lines distributed in nine processing plants.