Ketchup Filling Machine: The Selection Guide

Tomato ketchup is a sweet and tangy condiment made from tomatoes, sugar, and vinegar, with seasonings and spices. The spices and flavors vary, but commonly include onions, allspice, coriander, cloves, cumin, garlic, and mustard, and sometimes include celery, cinnamon, or ginger.

Ketchup is a non-Newtonian fluid, meaning that its viscosity changes under stress and is not constant. It is a shear thinning fluid which means its viscosity decreases with increased shear stress. [From Wiki]

Common bottles of ketchup

How to Choose A Suitable Liquid Filling Machine?

1. According to the nature of the filling material (viscosity, foaming, volatility, gas content, etc.), choose a suitable filling machine.

2. Choose a wide range of equipment, the scope of the process refers to its ability to adapt to different production requirements. The wider the process range, the more the equipment utilization can be improved and the multi-purpose of one machine can be realized.

3. Equipment with high filling accuracy. The filling error allowed by the national regulations is 1%. Therefore, when purchasing the filling machine, if the manufacturer says that the error value is between 0.5% and 1%, then you can purchase it with confidence.

1. Ketchup is a kind of material with high viscosity, no foaming and certain fluidity. Filling machine usually choose cost-effective piston filling machine

Our automatic linear piston filling machines is an extremely flexible piston fillers capable of filling accurately and rapidly a wide variety of products from low viscosity liquids to high viscosity paste or cream with or without chunks or particulates. Widely used in food industry (e.g., paste filling machine, butter filling machine, jam filling machine, ketchup filling machine, honey filling machine, edible oil filling machine, sauce filling machine etc); household product industry (e.g.,shampoo filling machine, liquid soap filling machine, liquid detergent filling machine, hand wash filling machine etc), personal care industry (e.g., cream filling machine, lotion filling machine, gel filling machine, perfume filling machine etc); Chemical industry (e.g., grease filling machine, lubricant filling machine etc); pharmaceutical industry (e.,g ointment filling machine, e liquid filling machine etc).

2. Filling capacity

Our piston ketchup filling machine supports 50ml to 5000ml filling, according to customer bottle capacity can be customized piston cylinder size, usually have 50-500ml, 100ml-1000ml, 500ml-5000ml piston cylinder can be selected. Available in 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 16 nozzle configurations to match specific production requirements, Dual lane option is available to increase production by 100% while preserving valuable line space.

3. Filling precision

Linear piston liquid filling machinery is manufactured with a 304 stainless steel frame, It comes standard with PLC control and touch screen HMI ensuring reliable, repeatable control with minimal operator intervention, precision bored, heavy- walled metering cylinders dispense product at accuracy up to +/- 0.2%, high-precision, servo motor driven screw movement faster and more precise than pneumatic system, food grade stainless steel and plastics for sanitary operations or use,anodized aluminum components, plus many more features available with motorized conveyor and indexing package for integrated container handling and positioning, No container/No fill feature detects missing or mispositioned containers to prevent waste and product spillage. Unique variable, separate speed control and actuator of a dual-stage fill provides precise “no spill” control for top-off applications or filling difficult products.

4. Filling process

Empty bottles are staged on the main drive conveyor prior to entering the piston filler. Bottles enter the filler and are counted by optical sensors to ensure the correct numbers of bottles are in position. Once in place, bottles are locked in position by the pneumatically operated bottle clamping mechanism. This ensures bottles are located correctly under each filling head to minimize under or over-fills. The filling process begins as a series of stainless steel valves descend into the bottles for fast, accurate and consistent filling. After target volume is achieved, the out-gate cylinder withdraws itself from its position and allows the filled bottles to go further on the conveyor for the sealing operations.

In addition to piston filling machines, our rotary lobe pump filling machines are also suitable for filling ketchup, each lobe pump is controlled by servo motor with high precision, wide filling range and can be connected to CIP system.

Ketchup Bottle Capping Machine

Ketchup bottle capping machine, usually choose the following equipment, the specific machine selection needs to be based on the shape of the cap, size, capping method to decide. For example: The snap capper is recommended for the ketchup squeeze bottle above, while the spindle capper is recommended for the 114 oz bottle.

Ketchup Bottle Labeling Machine

Ketchup bottle labeling machine, usually choose the following equipment, the specific machine selection needs to be based on the shape of the container, the size of the container, label size to decide.