Installation Of Pneumatic Conveying System Saves Food Manufacturer $150,000

Powdered egg manufacturer saves over $150,000 annually by implementing pneumatic conveying system.

Nutriom sets the bar high when it comes to producing its premium quality natural powdered egg products Ova Easy and Egg Crystals, that are sold at outdoor retailers such as REI, and online merchants such as Amazon.com; so, when the screw conveyor in their FSIS USDA facility required regular unexpected attention, Leonardo Etcheto, Plant Manager at the Lacey, WA facility knew it was time to look for a better solution.

Nutriom developed a unique process to produce its egg products which preserves the flavor and functionality of the eggs, and needed a materials handling system that would work within that specialized process to improve efficiency without damaging the crystals.

The screw conveyor was a difficult system to handle, says Etcheto. There were a lot of moving parts and that meant there were more things that could go wrong. It was a difficult system to clean and to perform maintenance.

Improved efficiency and gentle transfer werent the only provisions Etcheto required. Our technology is very different and were a little pickier than your average company. We needed a conveyor manufacturer that was able to modify its equipment to meet our needs, he says.

When attending a trade show for food manufacturers, Etcheto visited the booths of conveyor manufacturers. We wanted something that would not touch the product, allow us to be full stainless steel, and one of the biggest things is we wanted to get away from having to use oil, he says.

The food-grade screw conveyor at the Lacey plant had a plastic housing outside the screw conveyor. Plastic components from equipment in the food industry hold the potential to deposit debris or shavings into product undetected, and Nutriom preferred to eliminate that potential. The screw conveyor also housed a gearbox on top of the unit that required expensive H1 lubricants that on occasion, despite regular maintenance, would leak and create a mess.

After contacting a couple of East coast pneumatic conveyor manufacturers, Etcheto decided that one of the manufacturers could accommodate all his requirements. We have a lot of height restrictions because our building is older and has many areas with low ceilings and VAC-U-MAX was able to come up with a system that could fit in the space that we needed to fit into.

Celebrating its 60th year designing and manufacturing innovative pneumatic conveyor systems and support equipment for the conveying, weighing, and batching of dry materials, Belleville, NJ-based VAC-U-MAX is a pioneer with many industry firsts including air-powered venturi power units, direct-loading of vacuum-tolerant process equipment, and vertical-wall Tube Hopper material receivers.

Etcheto began with one pneumatic conveying system from the company and, based on its successful performance, we just kept adding, he says. The facility utilizes two pneumatic conveyors that connect to packaging systems, two that connect to the low temperature driers and two that connect to a mixer--one system breaks up the powder and puts it into the mixer and the other pulls it out.

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Installation Of Pneumatic Conveying System Saves Food Manufacturer $150,000