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How to produce the safest eggs in the world

This is the story of a company optimizing production for high-quality products. With advanced egg grading and automation, this site exemplifies modern success. Now, let’s focus on DAVA Foods’ shell-egg grading technology.

How to Produce the Safest Eggs in the World

Healthy, safe, innovative egg products, responsibly produced. That is the philosophy of the DAVA Foods Group. With its headquarters based in Denmark, the company consists of seven production sites and one sales office, handling around 2 billion eggs per year for the supply of approximately 28 million consumers within Scandinavia and Estonia.

This is a story of a company constantly leveling up its production capabilities to supply high-quality products to consumers. From high-end egg grading technology to robot automation, this production site shows how a modern egg grading plant is set up for success. Now let us zoom in on the shell-egg handling part of the business and specifically focus on DAVA Foods grading technology.

Business and grading technology

DAVA Foods is owned by approximately 8,350 Danish farmers through the Danish Agro Group. Every day, the production site receives fresh eggs from regional farms, contributing to DAVA’s product portfolio of Organic, Free Range, Barn, and Enriched Cage eggs.

Back in 2017, DAVA installed a GraderPro 400, a grading machine of the GraderPro series, the industry-leading egg grading machine range for everyone with the highest food safety and hygiene requirements on the market. And for DAVA Foods, food safety is a critical factor throughout their entire business.

Finland, Sweden, and Denmark have a zero-tolerance policy on salmonella cases. In fact, Denmark has one of the world's strictest control measures. While EU legislations require testing for salmonella every fifteen weeks, Denmark requires testing for cases every second week. DAVA Foods even takes it a step further, testing for salmonella weekly.

"Thanks to our strict control measures, business processes, and after all also the GraderPro from SANOVO, at DAVA we can proudly say that Danish eggs are among the world’s safest eggs," says COO Kristian Ramstad.

Developing the grading plant

A couple of years after the installation of the first GraderPro 400, DAVA’s business developed, and a new target was to shift from one day and one night shift to only one day shift. To achieve that, more grading capacity was required and the company decided to invest in another GraderPro 400 egg grading machine.

“First of all, the GraderPro is an efficient machine that also allows us to track every single egg back to its origin. That means every egg has a code tag telling us something about its origin and production type. This is great for ensuring the safety of consumers and avoid expensive losses for us as a business in a worst-case scenario of a recall” says Kristian Ramstad. “Secondly, the CIP integration in many parts of the grader is reducing our need for manual cleaning and saving us some time. There are also not many moving parts inside the grading system which also contributes to easier cleaning procedures, but also lower maintenance through less wear & tear,” continues Kristian Ramstad. 

As long-term partners, SANOVO and the DAVA Foods Group appreciate the good collaboration and started a new project together.

Automation as a new standard?

With automated de-palletizing, case palletizing, utility washing, and other processes, DAVA already automates many parts of their production. But there is always more room for improvement, so next year two of the new SANOVO’s Case Packer Twin will be installed.

“One of the major advantages of automation is that we can optimize our resources and work more efficiently in even fewer hours than we are used to. Automation provides more consistency in the throughput of the machine and the quality of the eggs. It’s beginning to look like automation will be the new modern egg industry’s standard.”

Take a look at DAVA Foods website

Safest Eggs in the World

"Thanks to our strict control measures, business processes, and after all also the GraderPro from SANOVO, at DAVA we can proudly say that Danish eggs are among the world’s safest eggs."

COO Kristian Ramstad