Pig Feed Packing Scale in Ukraine

A Small Weight Error Becomes Expensive at Feed-Mill Scale

The customer is an independent compound feed producer serving commercial pig farms and agricultural businesses in the Poltava region. Its pig-feed portfolio includes weaner, grower, finisher, and sow diets, with most products sold as dry pellets.

For this mill, the packing problem was not simply “some bags were a little heavy or light.” Variation in filling weight creates two different commercial risks.

If the operator deliberately increases the set point to avoid underweight packages, every additional gram becomes product giveaway. If the set point is kept close to the nominal weight while the old scale continues to fluctuate, some packages may fall below the declared quantity.

At several thousand tonnes of annual bagged production, even a small systematic overfill can become meaningful feed loss. The mill therefore wanted better control around the target weight rather than simply setting every 25 kg bag substantially above 25 kg.

Why DCS-50K Matched Dry Pig Feed

The DCS-50K was selected because the product reaching the packing section is relatively dry and free-flowing. Gravity feeding keeps the material path simple and is appropriate for conventional pig-feed pellets when the product does not contain an unusually sticky surface coating.

For this configuration, the reference dynamic weighing accuracy is ±0.2%, while the actual achievable repeatability depends on commissioning, feed characteristics, upstream head pressure, vibration, air supply, bagging speed, and calibration. The supplied project information also identifies electronic load-cell weighing and PLC control as key features of the selected system.

The Scale Had to Work with Four Feed Products, Not One

The packing station handles several pig-feed SKUs during a normal production week. Weaner products contain smaller pellets, while grower, finisher, and sow feeds generally use larger pellets. The mill mainly packs 25 kg bags, with 40 kg bags used for selected farm customers.

This matters because packing performance cannot be judged with one product during commissioning and then assumed to remain identical for every formulation.

Pellet diameter, bulk density, fines content, surface oil, pellet durability, and the amount of product sitting above the weighing unit can all influence filling behavior.

A batch of clean, dense 4 mm grower pellets can flow differently from a smaller weaner pellet containing more fines. The customer therefore established separate packing parameters for its principal product groups rather than using one universal setting.

The Accuracy Improvement Came from Controlling the Final Dosing Stage

High-speed packing and accurate packing pull in opposite directions if the feeding system is not controlled correctly.

Opening the gravity gate fully for the entire filling cycle is fast, but material continues moving while the weighing system approaches its set point. This can cause overshoot.

The practical solution is staged feeding.

The DCS-50K rapidly delivers the bulk of the required feed and then reduces the material flow as the target weight approaches. The slower final dosing phase gives the weighing controller time to complete the fill more accurately.

During commissioning, the technician therefore concentrated on the relationship among fast-feed cutoff, fine-feed cutoff, material flow, target weight, and actual settled weight.

Those values were established with the customer’s real pellets rather than copied directly from a factory test using a different material.

Upstream Product Flow Was Checked before Blaming the Scale

One lesson from this retrofit was that weighing accuracy does not depend only on the load cells.

If the finished-product bin feeds the scale inconsistently, the weighing system has to compensate for unstable material flow. Likewise, excessive vibration transmitted from nearby conveyors or equipment can interfere with weighing signals.

RICHI therefore reviewed the installation position, supporting structure, product head above the packing scale, discharge connection, bag clamp position, compressed-air quality, and downstream conveyor arrangement.

The scale was installed as an independent weighing point rather than rigidly allowing unnecessary vibration from adjacent equipment to pass into the weighing assembly.

25 kg Bags Became the Main Commissioning Reference

Because 25 kg is the mill’s highest-volume retail and farm-distribution format, commissioning began with this package.

A sequence of bags was filled and independently check-weighed. The technician then adjusted the coarse and fine feeding parameters based on the actual deviation pattern.

The objective was not to make one demonstration bag land exactly at 25.000 kg.

The important result was repeatability across consecutive bags.

A packing machine that occasionally produces an exact reading but alternates between significant underfill and overfill is less useful than a properly calibrated system producing a tight, stable distribution around the intended target.

40 kg Bags Required Their Own Parameter Set

The customer initially expected that changing from 25 kg to 40 kg would simply require entering a new target weight.

In practice, the larger fill mass changes the dosing cycle.

The fast-feed period becomes longer, and the relationship between material in free fall and material already registered by the weighing system must still be considered. For that reason, the 40 kg program was tested separately.

The PLC allows the mill to retain working parameters for the frequently produced bag formats, reducing adjustment time when the packing department changes from one feed order to another.

Why the Mill Did Not Choose an Auger or Belt Feeder

Different products require different packing mechanisms.

For fine powders with poor flowability, an auger-fed scale can provide more controlled material delivery. A belt-fed arrangement may be appropriate for certain products that do not behave well under direct gravity feeding.

Neither complication was necessary here.

The mill’s finished pig feed is predominantly screened, cooled pellet feed at normal storage moisture. Once excessive fines are removed, the pellets flow readily from the finished-product bin.

Gravity feeding therefore gave the customer a comparatively straightforward configuration with fewer driven feeding components.

Pellet Temperature Matters at the Packing Station Too

The new scale did not solve problems that belong to the cooler.

Before feed reaches the DCS-50K, pellets must already have been properly cooled and screened. Packing hot pellets can lead to condensation and storage problems regardless of weighing accuracy.

The customer therefore keeps the packing scale downstream of the cooler and final screening equipment.

Screening is particularly relevant to this application because an excessive fines fraction can change bulk flow behavior and increase dust around the bagging station.

The pig feed packing scale in Ukraine is consequently treated as the final quantitative dosing machine, not as a substitute for correct upstream feed processing.

The Retrofit Was Designed around Existing Equipment

Buying a standalone machine only made financial sense if the customer could retain most of the packing infrastructure already in place.

The new DCS-50K was therefore matched to the available discharge height and the existing finished-feed storage arrangement. The customer continued using its bag conveyor and industrial sewing equipment after the scale.

The operating sequence remained familiar: an operator positions the empty bag, the clamp secures it, the scale doses the programmed quantity, the filled bag is released onto the conveyor, and the bag moves to sewing and subsequent handling.

This reduced the amount of structural modification and operator retraining required for the upgrade.

Calibration Became a Routine Production-Control Task

Replacing an old scale with an electronic one does not eliminate the need for verification.

The mill introduced a simple check-weighing routine using an appropriate reference scale. Operators periodically sample finished bags, record the results, and investigate unusual drift before it becomes a larger production problem.

Calibration is also checked after maintenance that can affect the weighing assembly, after significant mechanical disturbance, or when packing behavior changes unexpectedly.

The customer pays particular attention when changing to a feed with substantially different bulk density or fines content.

This approach is more useful than promising that PLC control means a packing scale can “never drift.” Electronic control improves consistency, but a commercial weighing system still needs correct installation, verification, and maintenance.

The Economic Benefit Is Not Only Avoiding Underweight Bags

After the retrofit, the production manager became equally interested in overfill.

Consider a simple example. If a mill unnecessarily gives away an average of only 50 g on every nominal 25 kg bag, that equals 2 kg of additional product for every tonne packed in 25 kg bags.

Across 5,000 tonnes, that would represent approximately 10 tonnes of feed transferred to customers without being invoiced.

This is why packing-scale investment is often evaluated using both compliance control and giveaway reduction.

The exact financial saving for any mill should be calculated from its own before-and-after check-weighing data, annual bag volume, feed value, and actual average overfill rather than from a generic payback claim.

What the Ukrainian Team Noticed after the Change

The most visible difference was not packing appearance. A sewn 25 kg feed bag looked essentially the same as before.

The difference appeared in the check-weighing records.

Operators no longer needed to compensate for an unpredictable scale by repeatedly changing the target during the shift. Once the appropriate parameters had been established for each principal product and bag size, the packing station became much easier to manage.

“With the old scale, our operators watched every batch because the result could gradually move during the day. With the new unit, we still check bags regularly, but now the checks confirm the process instead of constantly telling us to correct it. That is the biggest improvement for us.”

Maintenance Focus Shifted from Emergency Repair to Prevention

The customer keeps the weighing assembly clean and avoids allowing feed dust to accumulate around moving parts and sensors.

The pneumatic system is supplied with clean, dry compressed air, because unstable air pressure or contaminated pneumatic components can affect gate and clamp operation.

Bag-clamping components are inspected as wear items rather than assumed to have a fixed lifetime. Their service interval depends heavily on bag material, operating frequency, alignment, and handling practices.

The mill also keeps selected pneumatic components and other routine spares on site so that a relatively inexpensive component does not stop the entire packing section.

From Qingdao to the Customer’s Ukrainian Feed Mill

The packing equipment was prepared for export at RICHI’s manufacturing base and shipped from Qingdao Port.

Because transport conditions and usable Ukrainian import routes can change, the final sea entry point, transshipment arrangement, customs route, and inland delivery plan are confirmed with the customer and freight forwarder when the equipment is actually dispatched rather than being treated as a permanently fixed Qingdao–Odesa schedule.

This is especially important for projects involving Ukraine, where logistics planning needs to reflect the operating conditions at the time of shipment.

What RICHI Needed to Know before Configuring the Scale

The phrase “50 kg packing machine” is not enough information for selecting an automatic weighing system.

For this project, the important inputs included product form, pellet diameter, bulk density, fines percentage, bag material, minimum and maximum bag weight, required bags per hour, available height under the finished-product bin, compressed-air conditions, local power supply, bag-closing method, and the layout of the downstream conveyor.

The customer also identified the 25 kg product as its priority SKU. That allowed commissioning to concentrate on the format with the greatest commercial impact before establishing the secondary 40 kg program.

When a DCS-50K Makes Sense for Pig Feed Packing

This configuration is particularly suitable when a feed manufacturer already has a functioning production line but the final quantitative packing stage has become inaccurate, slow, difficult to maintain, or incompatible with current production requirements.

It is also appropriate for greenfield feed mills, but the engineering approach is different. In a new line, the packing machine can be designed together with finished-product bins, conveyors, dust extraction, sewing equipment, palletizing, and plant automation from the beginning.

For a retrofit such as this Ukrainian project, interface dimensions become more important because the new equipment has to fit what is already installed.

Pig Feed Packing Scale in Ukraine: Accuracy Is a Process, Not One Number

This pig feed packing scale in Ukraine project ultimately involved more than replacing an old weighing device with a digital one. The DCS-50K had to match dry pig-feed pellets, two principal bag weights, the existing packing layout, the available pneumatic system, and the mill’s actual production rhythm.

The selected gravity-fed configuration provides a straightforward solution for free-flowing pellet feed. Its reference dynamic accuracy is ±0.2%, while electronic weighing and PLC control provide the foundation for repeatable automatic dosing. 

More importantly, the customer now manages packing accuracy through correct machine selection, staged feeding, product-specific settings, check weighing, calibration, preventive maintenance, and stable upstream product flow.

For another Ukrainian pig feed mill, RICHI Machinery would not recommend a packing scale based only on annual tonnage. The selection should start with the actual feed form and bulk density, bag sizes, required packing speed, target weighing tolerance, bag material, sealing method, existing bin dimensions, available installation height, compressed-air supply, electrical conditions, and the equipment already installed before and after the weighing station.

That information determines whether a gravity-fed DCS-50K is the appropriate choice—or whether another feeding and weighing configuration would provide better control.