How to drive the success of a semi-homemade bakery product? With a plus: Deep-freezing of already packaged products
Backing on its basic philosophy, ME Food Solutions applies the best skills and studies the best solutions for each client, whether it is a large industrial group, perhaps international, or “young” companies that wish to expand their production and their range of action.
As a concrete and reliable partner, ME Food Solutions is not only a witness, but also a player in entrepreneurial successful stories in the food industry, for 2 main reasons, such as:
Use of technologies that enable customers to improve product quality, also remarkably,
Full plant customization that always guarantees very high production standards and is also a source of saving.
That is the case of a company that has become a leader in Italy in the production of an increasingly popular bakery product: “pinsa”.
It was 2020 when at Millennium Engineering the telephone rang for Eng. Priore: The Technical Department was immediately involved in preliminary studies, and an inspection followed suit: The small-sized company, in its infancy but already with very clear ideas, required a spiral to convey the product from point A to point B of the production line, with consequent (partial) cooling.
A few months later, the spiral was delivered, installed and tested on the customer’s premises. 7 storeys for an 88-metre, single-pulley conveyor belt (with lifting system).
The first chapter of this story continues with an increasingly high market demand of a high-end pinsa.
The customer’s choice, which turned out to be far-sighted, keeps some processes at artisan level while few others are industrialized.
Further pinsa variants have been developed, to conquer new market shares and strengthen positioning in the large-scale retail trade.
After just a few years, and Eng. Priore’s phone rang again.
It is about the study of forced cooling that does not affect fragrance and airiness of dough.
This case, the challenge is posed by the relevant quantity of flour in the product and its “behaviour” in relation to the air flows necessary for temperature blasting. Space available, as it often happens, is limited: In a cell of m 10×7 (m 3 high), ME Food Solutions engineers a spiral of 197-metre belt, with mm 800 loading height, and mm 1050 discharge height.
The product from the ovens has an entry temperature of 85°C, stays in the cell for about 30 minutes at 2-3°C, and exits at 15°C.
The flexibility of the system, whose belt speed can be varied, guarantees the processing of different product types, as required.
The customer, highly demanding, is fully satisfied. That is not yet the end, on the contrary. The latest phone call (by now) dates 2024: “Eng. Priore, can we deep-freeze already packed products?”
That’s not an easy task. Jointly with its customer, ME Food Solutions started an analysis and study stage. The product characteristics need and deserve a one-of-a-kind tailored solution: hitting -18°C at the core, inside the plastic wrapping.
Hence, the third solution: An oval spiral with inversion, 11 storeys up + 11 down, for a useful belt length of m 775, with variable speed ranging between 4,6 and 12,8 metre/min.
Temperature inside the cell at -33°C, and variable permanence time – depending on the product features – from 90 to 150 minutes, for Kg 1500/h, on the average, of processed food.
Numbers that mark the history and evolution of a company that has been able to stand out thanks to a high-end bakery product, so much as to be in the refrigerated counters of the best Italian supermarkets.
Stages of a path where ME Food Solutions plays a leading role, as the only partner able to understand the specific food development and treatment requirements.
Right to the “plus”: The deep-freezing of already packaged products.
Quality and great figures, which go hand in hand, always.
With further evidence: The soundness of this ME Food Solutions’ solution created for the Italian company is widely welcome in Eastern Europe, with prompt and growing demands for its application to already packaged products in different processes, such as pasteurization and deep-freezing.
