Client: Muyuan Foods Co., Ltd. (Henan Muyuan, SZSE: 002714) | Location: Henan, China | Equipment: Multi-Level Automated Carton Tunnel Freezer | Application: Boxed Chilled & Frozen Pork
Customer Background & Operational Challenge
Headquartered in Nanyang, Henan Province, Muyuan Foods Co., Ltd. (Henan Muyuan) is the world’s largest integrated pork producer, operating vertically integrated breeding, feed milling, and high-speed automated slaughtering and meat-packing plants. As Muyuan expanded its boxed pork primal and portioned meat capacity, traditional static blast-freezing rooms created operational bottlenecks—requiring heavy manual pallet loading, intensive forklift traffic in sub-zero environments, and long, uneven freezing cycles across stacked cartons.
Muyuan required a fully automated, continuous carton freezing system capable of receiving boxed pork directly from the packaging line, freezing cartons uniformly to a −18°C core temperature, and discharging them automatically to palletizing and cold storage.
Square Technology Solution: Multi-Level Automated Carton Freezer
Square Technology engineered, manufactured, and commissioned an industrial multi-level automated carton tunnel freezer tailored to Muyuan’s high-throughput pork packing line. The system integrates automated vertical elevators, servo-driven pushers, and multi-tier carrier racks inside a high-efficiency PIR-insulated enclosure.
- Fully Automated Infeed, Tier Loading & Discharge: Master cartons travel directly from upstream case sealing and checkweighing conveyors onto the vertical loading elevator. Servo-controlled pushers load each carton onto its designated freezing tier and discharge frozen cartons automatically to downstream palletizing—eliminating manual handling inside the −35°C freezing zone.
- High-Static-Pressure Horizontal Cross-Flow Airflow: Dedicated evaporator banks and high-static-pressure fans drive −35°C to −40°C cold air horizontally across the full width of every carrier tier, eliminating dead-air pockets and ensuring uniform core freezing without box deformation or bulging.
- Multi-Tier Retention Time Flexibility: Independent tier indexing allows different carton weights and pork cut specifications to run simultaneously with programmable retention times matched to each product’s thermal load.
- PLC/SCADA Control & WMS Traceability: A centralized Siemens PLC and touchscreen HMI monitor tier occupancy, servo drive positions, and evaporator performance in real time, integrating with plant barcode scanning for full carton-level traceability.
Operational Results
The automated carton freezer transformed Muyuan’s boxed pork freezing workflow from batch blast-room handling into a continuous, unmanned inline process. By combining direct conveyor integration with uniform horizontal cross-flow heat transfer, the installation significantly reduced freezing cycle times, lowered refrigeration energy consumption per ton of pork, and eliminated sub-zero manual loading labor.
