Processed products: spices
Preparation of spice mixtures
The company is a spice mixture manufacturer.
The objective is a spice blending line with cleanability of the equipment and recipe flexibility.
The entire blending line for spices has been designed with flexibility of recipes in mind. The customer wishes to ensure the production of his recipes during four consecutive days with a progressive increase in taste and colour, the last day of production being reserved for cleaning and drying the mixing line.
In order to ensure the flexibility of the line, the choice to use stainless steel containers has been validated. A set of about 100 containers of different capacities was ordered by the customer. These containers are used to make the pre-weighed products as well as the premixes. A container mixer (IBC tumbler blender) ensures dry mixing and a horizontal mixer with Palamatic-EasyClean features ensures mixing or incorporation of liquid if necessary.
The liquids incorporated are oil or liquid flavours. Due to the varied demands of end users, our customer wanted several packaging lines to offer the right packaging for the respective use of each type of product.
Namely, the spice blending line can supply blends packaged in big bags, blends packaged in 25kg bags - Bag filling PalSack®01 - and blends packaged in bags of all weights. Also, a packaging line for buckets and small bags has been integrated.
These spice sachets can be directly used in meat processing cutters.
The stainless steel containers are cleaned after each use in a dedicated washing room, which facilitates changes in manufacturing without stopping the production line.
In addition, a cleaning in place network is integrated on all "fixed" machines processing premixes or mixtures. A technical room receives the water tanks for the different cycles: pre-washing, washing, rinsing. A hot battery ensures the drying of the equipment and piping by blowing.
All the washing cycles are controlled directly by the PLC with operator validation phases to ensure the installation of any removable washing nozzles.
Dewatering" solutions are used to reduce drying times.
The design of the equipment has been specially conceived to facilitate the flow of washing water and avoid any retention. Also, access hatches enable operators to access the interior of the equipment to check the cleanliness of the powder processing machines.
According to the recipes processed on the line, dry rinsing batches are carried out with salt to ensure a preliminary cleaning of the equipment.