With high input costs and little manouvering room to raise prices, food processors are looking at automating their plants as a means of keeping their margins healthy.

Denmark-based Scanvaegt will unveil the three machines for the first next week at the International Poultry Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia.

The company's Horizontal Breast Cutter cuts fresh poultry fillets and butterflies into uniformly shaped fixed weight products. The cutter has been designed with hygiene and low production cost in mind, the company stated.

Only one to two operators are needed to keep the machine running. Changeovers of cutting molds take less than 30 seconds, the company claims.

The company's ScanFeeder 7700 is an automatic vacuum infeed system. The ScanFeeder has low running expenses due to its design features, the company claims. In addition, the machine takes up less space than other feeders on the market while running at a high speed, Scanvaegt claims.

Scanvaegt's ScanVision is used for sorting of raw material and for quality control. The device has a new vision system designed for grading and batching operations.

It can sort raw material before further processing and packing to specific customer orders. The system is able to specify to which job the specific product should go, in order to keep give-away as low as possible.

ScanVision is particular useful for quality control where appearance of the product is of key importance, the company stated.