Around the “totem pole”: line 204. Leavening + Freezing
ME Food Solutions lands in Oman, a country on the border between Middle East and Southeast Asia.
And it takes up a no small challenge: the realization of five turnkey production lines for one of the country’s major food processing company dedicated to bakery and pastry.
The “line 204” certainly represents the flagship of this fruitful partnership.
At a first leavening spiral, with a total belt length of 496 m, is followed by a second one, again inserted inside a special cell insulated, dedicated to freezing. 506 meters of conveyor belt at a constant temperature of -33°C, for a calculated freezing time of 60 minutes.
But the real challenge is the delicate leavening process, which ME Food Solutions entrusts to the calibration of a device, the 2ACR Leavener, affectionately called a “totem” in jargon: 2000 liters of water per hour reach a temperature of 60-70°C inside the piping of the facility and are released as air with a capacity of about 15000 m3 per hour.
Gentle air recirculation, constant temperature and humidity are the 3 keys to achieving ad hoc leavening, surely the most delicate food processing.
Also considering the production capacity of the plant: 840 kg of product -in this case unsweetened croissants-each hour.
As always, the flexibility of the ME Food Solutions plants offers the customer the possibility of managing the same machines to process, on different production cycles, several types of products: in this case small-sized croissants of 20g each, medium-sized ones of 70g, and finally a maxi size of 90g.
From 480 to 810kg of product per hour.
Adjusting the speed of the conveyor belt and other specific parameters makes it possible, both within the leavening cell and in the freezing cell, to perfectly modulate the dwell time for different foods, guaranteeing, in each case, the flawless success of the working process.
Remotely, ME Food Solutions technicians are able, by means of dedicated software, to control the parameters of the plants, offering assistance to the customer at all times: guaranteeing quality in the processing of the product is the primary goal, but this not only does not contrast – indeed goes hand in hand – with the challenge of high productivity on the part of the customer.
And that’s not all!
Designing with flexibility means making high-performance plants: in addition to the “totem” the feature of the “204 line” is an articulated by-pass system made possible by the installation of some “lifting” conveyors: these, operating upward or downward, open or close different transit lines for the product (inescapable especially, based on what was said before, given the diversity of foods to be processed).
A line of conveyors in continuity with the two cells allows, as a first route, to avoid rising to head immediately for freezing while the second option provides both. The implementation of special conveyors, always lifting, ensures in case of production downtime the discharge of the product at the same time with both the first and the second spiral.
Customization after careful listening to the customer is the watchword for ME Food Solutions: innovation and continuous research are the basis of all design solutions-from the simplest to the most complex-and of the continuous desire to improve all food processing, even the most challenging ones such as leavening: the “totem” is proof of this.
Also in Oman.
