Fully Automatic Rotary Hummus Filling & Sealing Machine

An automatic hummus filling machine is packaging equipment that turns an empty cup and a tank of finished product into a sealed, retail-ready pack with no hand contact at any point. The SDH-R rotary cup filling, sealing & cupping machine performs the entire sequence on one indexing turret: it denests a cup, doses a measured shot of hummus, heat-seals a film membrane across the rim, applies a lid, and discharges the finished unit.

Every cycle runs the same five stations:

• Denest - a single empty cup is stripped from the magazine and dropped into the turret pocket.
• Fill - a servo-driven volumetric piston deposits an exact dose, anywhere from 50 g to 500 g.
• Seal - roll-film membrane is heat-sealed to the cup flange for a tamper-evident pack; a pre-cut lid is available as an option.
• Lid - an optional snap-on lid is pressed on for retail shelf presentation and consumer reclose.
• Discharge - the finished cup exits to your takeaway conveyor for labelling and date coding.

Rotary geometry matters because the stations work in parallel. While one cup is being filled, another is being sealed and a third is being lidded, so throughput is governed by the slowest single station rather than the sum of all of them. That is how a machine occupying a 44 x 52 in floor space reaches up to 30 cups per minute on a dry cycle, and a realistic 18-25 CPM in live production once product viscosity, cup handling and film change are accounted for.

The buyers are fresh-dip producers who have outgrown hand-filling: regional hummus brands moving into chain grocery, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern manufacturers, private-label co-packers, dairies, and deli or prepared-food plants adding a chilled dip SKU. If demand is no longer your constraint and headcount is, an automatic hummus filling machine is the step that removes the ceiling.

Servo Volumetric Piston Filling vs. Other Filler Types

Cup fillers fall into four families: gravity or timed-flow, auger, pump (lobe or progressive cavity), and volumetric piston. Gravity and timed-flow suit thin liquids and lose accuracy the moment product thickens. Augers belong on powders. Pumps handle paste but drift with viscosity and temperature. The SDH-R is built as a servo cup filler with a servo-driven volumetric piston, because hummus, tahini-heavy blends and chunky dips are the products where positive displacement beats flow.

The piston draws a fixed volume and pushes all of it into the cup. Stroke, speed and dwell are controlled electronically rather than by mechanical cams, which delivers:

• Fill-weight accuracy of plus or minus 0.5%, so you stop padding target weight to guard against underweight packs
• A 50 g to 500 g fill range on one machine, across 4, 8, 10 and 16 oz standard cups plus custom 2 oz to 32 oz formats
• Recipe storage on the PLC and HMI - dose, speed and seal parameters recalled per SKU, with changeover in under about 15 minutes
• Gentle handling of inclusions such as roasted pepper, olive or whole chickpeas, without shearing them into the base

Multi-Component Filling: Up to Three Stations in One Pass

The SDH-R carries up to three filler stations, which is what makes it a true multi component filling machine. Base hummus at station one, an oil or harissa drizzle at station two, a garnish of chickpeas, paprika or seeds at station three - all deposited into the same cup, in register, in one pass at line speed. Layered and topped SKUs are where fresh-dip margin lives, and hand-topping is exactly the operation that caps a manual line. The same three-station arrangement is offered across our dip filling & sealing machine configurations for tzatziki, baba ganoush, guacamole and pesto.

MAP Nitrogen Flush and Shelf Life

The optional MAP cup filling machine package flushes the cup headspace with nitrogen immediately before the membrane seal is made, displacing the oxygen that drives oxidation and aerobic spoilage. Configured as a nitrogen flush filling machine, the SDH-R typically takes refrigerated shelf life from roughly 7-10 days to 30-45 days or more.

That one option changes what you can sell: shipping to a distribution centre several states away instead of a local route, holding safety stock, and meeting a retailer's minimum-remaining-shelf-life clause on delivery. For most producers, modified atmosphere packaging cup filler capability is the difference between a regional listing and a national one. Full specifications are on our technology page.

Small cup filling machine and tabletop cup filling machine describe two different tiers of equipment, and buying the wrong tier is the most expensive mistake in this category. Here is the honest comparison.

Manual hand-fill. Scoop or hand-pump into cups, then hand-place lids or run a benchtop heat sealer. Capital cost is near zero, and it genuinely works for farmers' markets, food-service tubs and single-store production. Weights vary cup to cup, seals vary operator to operator, and output scales only by adding people.

Semi-automatic and tabletop. A benchtop piston filler or compact semi-auto filler-sealer where the operator loads the cup, triggers the dose and moves it to the sealing station. It is the cheapest route to repeatable doses and a genuine tamper-evident seal, and the right answer for producers running a few hundred to a couple of thousand cups a week. Its ceiling is the operator: throughput, weight consistency and hygiene discipline all track how tired that person is at hour six.

Automatic rotary. Denest, fill, seal, lid and discharge run unattended on one turret with recipe-driven changeover. This is the SDH-R tier - up to 30 cups per minute, plus or minus 0.5% dosing, optional MAP nitrogen flush and up to three filler stations.

To be direct about where we sit: the SDH-R is an automatic rotary machine, not a tabletop unit. It is compact for its class at 44 x 52 in and 65.6 in tall, and a sensible first automatic machine for a growing brand - but if you are packing a few hundred cups a week, a semi-automatic filler is the better use of your capital, and we will say so.

The switching point is usually when hand-filling turns from a cost problem into a scheduling problem: declining volume, missed delivery windows, or hiring repeatedly for a job nobody stays in. When that happens, compare the full specification on the hummus filling machine page.