Slicing into new marketsExperts at Pan Land Union of Taiwan streamline bread slicing and bagging operations

A BREAD knife's as extinct as a Dodo with the modern slicing and packing machinery around today and Taiwan's Pan Land Union's Total Slicer and Baker Bagging and Packing Machines will make it sure it stays that way. A team of ten engineers at the company's HQ near Taipei spends days fretting over how to make the whole process of baking, slicing and packing our daily bread faster and ever more streamlined. With Pan Land's new Total Slicer PL-1 they've gone a long way toward achieving that. It's a fully automatic, high quantity bread slicer and packing machine that has a perfect slicing surface and smooth slice action that saves time and labor costs. Compatible with all types of bag packing and closing systems, it is powered up by an imported 220/380 volt, 3 phase, 50/60 Hz, 3 Kw European made motor. And automation ?basically one touch control ?makes using it quite literally a cakewalk. The slicer is especially suited for large quantities of up to 1800 pc /h and is perfectly matched to Pan Land's Total Baker Bagging and Packing Machine PL-2. The latter with a bag air blower unit and schutlok bag tension units, boasts a precision system control to round off the packing of up to 2000-25000 pc/h. Once again an imported 220/380-volt, 3 phase, 50/60 Hz, 2 Kw motor chips in with the power. Hopes are running high for this automated combo on foreign markets as it joins a line of Pan Land baking machinery that, as OEM products, have already found their way into Holland, Belgium and Norway with prospects in other European countries. Something of a turnabout, because, as an agent, it wasn't that long ago that Pan Land profits rested on the range of ovens they imported from the German specialist Wachtel for local clients. This revenue line was supplemented by imported bakery equipment from Rondo Doge, Fortuna, STAMM, ALASKA, BELSHAW and Peerless among other customized equipment they imported at the request of Taiwan baking industry professionals. To this end Pan Land also consults on and designs frozen dough automatic lines, blast freezing and cooling technology, pastry make up lines, cookies and cakes production lines and plant design and layout. Thirty-five years in the business of importing baking equipment it was only eight years ago that the company actually went solo with its own brand of hi-tech baking equipment, from ovens, for the local market, to bread slicers, bagging and packing machines. "We realized, after all that time, that anything they could do, we could probably do just as well and if not better," says general manager Mike Chi. Before kicking off with his own company in 1978, Mike worked himself up through the ranks as a star salesman with a another pioneering company in the bakery equipment industry. Pan Land, he says, is "more or less a translation of his own name into English" although it nicely sums up his "pan land" vision for the company ?"to achieve a market in countries across Europe and Asia". There's been no looking back. Production has risen to 36 combo units, all special orders from foreign markets. And its still growing as new markets in Asia are targeted ?one of their machines is already doing its stuff in Malaysia and Japan has also shown an interest. As salesmen take the plunge into new market far from the homeland engineers in Taipei press on with fine tuning the technology that is making Pan Land Union's baking, slicing and packing equipment a force to be reckoned with in bakeries on three continents. (David Monson)Women Jordan Shoes