The BAADER Gutting and Inspection Solution

A perfect final fish product requires a perfect gutting. And what defines a perfect gutting is a clean and precise princess-cut at a revolutionary speed. That is what the Gutting and Inspection Solution – the BAADER 144​ does. Some call it cash machine, some call it workhorse, able to process up to 25 fish per minute.

It is fair to say that with its predecessor model  – the BAADER 142 –  BAADER initiated the emergence of the aquaculture industry as known today. Fish was gutted by hand up until the mid-1990s, when the BAADER 142 salmon-gutting machine came onto the market. A revolutionary feature of the new machine was that it could perform the princess cut automatically. This turned out to be a true game-changer for the industry. All manual steps were now resolved in one compact machine, leading to profitable mass production of farmed salmon. Successor BAADER 144 combines this proven technology with the latest know-how expanding to an entire gutting and inspection solution of various components.

The gutting and inspection solution features and benefits

Within a wide working range of two to eleven kilograms, the BAADER 144 can run with only little adjustments via the latest electronic control box for which no tools are needed. And when they say run  –  they mean run and run and run. That is stable performance the BAADER way.

Increasing efficiency even higher is possible when the BAADER 144 is deployed in combination with the Speed Feed System BAADER 1570. This automatic feeding system can seamlessly feed up to eight gutting machines with a nearly 100% hit rate. All fish fed into the system will reach the gutting machine directly with a speed of up to 25 fish per minute.

“The Speed Feeder is the first out of various components of the salmon gutting line”, as Hauke Schröder Grewe, Head of Projects, explains in the Salmon Session on Gutting Solutions that started airing on October 8th. At the Speed Feeder is “where the automatic tracking of quality parameters starts,” he highlights. Thanks to optimized transport routes designed and tested by the BAADER Projects team around Schröder Grewe, “we can carry up to 200 fish per minute in a small installation space”. ​ If a gutting machine is switched off in the middle of processing, remaining fish in the line will simply be readdressed. ​  

State-of-the-art plants are using multiple automatically fed BAADER 144 Gutting Machines reaching a capacity of 200 fish per minute. And the solution is not for large-scale only. “The set-up can be downsized for smaller volume demands”, stresses Schröder Grewe.

Data capturing and camera detection systems

An integrated camera system – the Salmon Gut Inspection System SGI - provides precise pictures of every fish during gutting.  In ultra-high-speed processing, quality data is collected online and analysed in real-time. Based on quality characteristics the subsequent workflow is then adapted as needed. The gutted fish leaves the machine at a central outfeed connected to a high-end scaling system. Here weight information of every fish is being captured and the so-called K-factor - the combination of fish weight and lengths – is calculated. This combination makes it possible to realize a full flexible distribution of the fish according to k-factor, quality grading, physical and size information and more for further processing. Fish with a higher yield expectation is channelled towards filleting while other fish will be directed towards head-on and gutted(HOG) salmon sales.

Machine Operation: A hygienic self-controlling and regulating machine

“Don’t be afraid of the high-tech. If you don’t want it, go manual and the system will work just fine. But if you go automatic, you will enjoy all the benefits this self-controlling and self-regulating machine has to offer, for your peace of mind”, says René Hensel, Electrical Designer. “Knowing how to read it, this machine speaks to you and tells you what to do. Touching the right buttons, it is easy to operate with stable and reliable results”. ​

And cleaning is just as convenient as operation. Chain cleaning is being performed automatically, there is no grease in the product area and the tools can easily be dismounted for external cleaning and the integration of a Pipe Cleaning System (PCS) is possible.

The design of the BAADER 144 follows the highest hygiene standards. The guts are removed without any contamination of water by being separated and collected in a second cyclone. This also allows for further processing of co-products at the highest value.

Tracking and tracing along the entire value chain

The real-time performance information for machine and operator offered by the B’Logic®Process Navigation software together with the barcode tracking of every single fish to the packed box elevates the BAADER gutting and inspection approach to a smart solution. And BAADER is going even further by focusing not only on improving the capturing, processing and correlation of data on the individual fish during processing but along the entire value chain – up-and downstream. “Upstream, the k-factor can provide other stakeholders such as farmers a good indication as to what fish feed will produce the best fish in terms of expected processing yield. Downstream, claims related to the cleanness of the product’s belly cavity can be easily traced back by the simple use of the respective barcode of the fish delivery. With that, the customer can see the pictures of the belly cavity of each fish sold inside the box in question”, highlights Schreiber.

Anyone interested in the value chain digitalization approach of BAADER can contact the value chain network or talk to his respective BAADER Sales representative.