Yogurt

Drinking and spoonable yogurt are living, temperature-sensitive products that demand hygienic design above all. The culture stays active inside the pack, so every surface between the balance tank and the sealing jaws belongs to the shelf-life question. The line has to be cold-chain-ready: filled cold, kept cold, with no warm dead legs where product stands and changes character. Sanitary product paths and full CIP of the wetted circuit are daily work here. Texture is the second constraint — yogurt is shear-sensitive, and pushed hard through a restriction it breaks down and separates free whey at the top of the pack. Gentle piston dosing matches that physics. A servo-driven piston draws a measured volume through a sanitary valve and delivers it at a controlled rate, so shear is set by the machine, not by line pressure. Because the stroke defines the dose, fill accuracy holds across the viscosity spread between stirred, set and drinking yogurt. Shut-off nozzles close positively at the end of each stroke, keeping the last drop inside the nozzle instead of in the seal area, where dairy residue makes a pack that both leaks and spoils. Contact parts are stainless with food-grade elastomers and strip down without tools; nozzle bore and piston acceleration follow the viscosity actually being run. Format follows the market. The stick pack is the on-the-go single serve — one portion the consumer tears and squeezes, and the format dairy brands use to move beyond the classic cup; in foodservice the same yogurt stick pack machine makes a portion-control unit rather than a retail item. A sachet holds the same volume in a flatter shape with more print area, which suits sampling, hotel breakfast service and airline catering, so a yogurt sachet packaging machine covers three- and four-side seal work. VFFS pillow bags take drinking yogurt and fermented milk drinks in markets where the everyday pack is a bag rather than a bottle. The working dose range is 10 to 20 ml. Output depends on lane count and lane count depends on pack width, so the two figures should never be quoted apart. On a narrow stick the SPM1200 runs 12 lanes and reaches up to 840 packs per minute; the same machine on a wide pack drops to 7 lanes and up to 490 packs per minute. SPM1200 works between 7 and 12 lanes, SPM800 between 4 and 12, SPM320 between 1 and 8. Three Mentpack platforms cover yogurt: SPM1200 for high-output stick and sachet lines, SPM800 as the mid-range multi-lane yogurt filling machine, and SPM320 where lane count is low and changeovers are frequent. Typical users are dairy processors and fermented-milk brands extending a cup range into single serve, contract packers filling for retail and foodservice, and hotel, airline and hospital catering suppliers who need a sealed, portion-controlled unit that survives a chilled supply chain.