IN Brief:
- MULTIVAC demonstrated ready-meal production lines combining filling, tray sealing, labelling, and AI-supported vision inspection.
- A system developed with Gigatherm links packaging and microwave pasteurisation within a continuous production process.
- MULTIVAC says the pasteurisation process can support shelf lives of 30 to 50 days, depending on the product and process.
MULTIVAC has demonstrated ready-meal production systems combining filling, tray sealing, labelling, AI-supported vision inspection, and microwave pasteurisation within connected processing and packaging lines.
The equipment was shown during the company’s Ready Meal Days at its Wolfertschwenden headquarters in Germany, where more than 100 visitors saw configurations covering both higher-volume production and smaller-batch operation.
One line combined a TX 620 traysealer with filling equipment from GS Italia and MULTIVAC labelling technology. The company also demonstrated its smaller T 305 and T 255 traysealers with a stand-alone filler, providing an alternative configuration for shorter runs and lower production volumes.
Quality inspection was integrated through an AI-supported vision system designed to distinguish between ready-meal variants and check how individual components are arranged inside a tray.
That extends inspection beyond the presence of a pack or label. Multi-component ready meals can contain several deposited ingredients, so a tray may be correctly sealed while still carrying the wrong product combination or an incorrectly positioned component.
Automated vision can add another control point between filling and finished pack, particularly where factories run frequent recipe changes. Its performance, however, depends on the inspection model being validated against the natural variation found in real food products rather than only against idealised samples.
MULTIVAC also demonstrated a continuous packaging and pasteurisation process developed with Gigatherm. The system combines tray packaging with microwave pasteurisation instead of treating preservation as a separate batch operation after packs leave the line.
The company says the process is designed to support continuous production while maintaining flexibility across recipes and packaging concepts. MULTIVAC claims the microwave treatment can produce shelf lives of 30 to 50 days while maintaining hygiene and product-safety standards.
That range is not a universal shelf-life guarantee. The outcome will depend on the food formulation, initial microbiological load, heating profile, packaging system, seal integrity, chilled storage, and the validation work carried out for the individual product.
Connecting pasteurisation directly to packaging changes the balance of the line. Filling, sealing, inspection, marking, and thermal treatment have to operate at compatible rates if one process is not to become a bottleneck for everything upstream.
Production control therefore becomes as important as the nominal throughput of individual machines. Recipe handling, transfer between stations, reject management, recovery after stoppages, cleaning, and changeovers all influence whether the line delivers stable commercial output.
The AI inspection system creates the same integration requirement. If product identification feeds into downstream labelling or quality decisions, the factory needs reliable recipe data and clear controls around what happens when the system identifies an incorrect variant or component arrangement.
The smaller T 305 and T 255 configurations acknowledge another reality of ready-meal production: not every operation runs long campaigns of one high-volume product. Shorter batches, seasonal ranges, retailer-specific products, and product-development work can make a smaller traysealer and stand-alone filling arrangement more practical than a heavily integrated line.
At larger volumes, the TX 620 configuration pushes in the opposite direction by reducing manual interfaces between filling, packaging, labelling, and inspection. That can improve consistency, but it also makes line balancing and common recipe management more important because a fault can propagate across several connected processes.
MULTIVAC has been extending this systems approach across its food-processing portfolio, combining packaging machinery with automation, inspection, digital production tools, and connected services. The Ready Meal Days demonstration narrows that strategy onto a category where multiple ingredients, chilled distribution, frequent recipe changes, and shelf-life control create demanding production conditions.
The Gigatherm collaboration pushes the boundary further into preservation. If microwave pasteurisation can be validated as part of a continuous line for specific ready meals, processors could reduce the physical and scheduling separation between packing and thermal treatment.
Commercial performance will depend on more than the demonstration itself. Cleaning time, product changeovers, maintenance, energy demand, labour, line availability, and process validation will determine whether the combined system improves effective output in an operating factory.
MULTIVAC’s latest ready-meal work therefore places the traysealer inside a wider production architecture rather than treating it as an isolated packaging machine. Filling, inspection, labelling, sealing, and pasteurisation are being engineered as connected stages, with the operational value determined by how consistently the complete line can run.
