Food & Drink
Producing profits Plant size the same – output doubles with Flexicon screw conveyors
Flexicon’s flexible screw conveyors are at the heart of a major transformation in production procedures at Dairy Industries Jamaica, specialist producers and contract-packagers of a range of milk-based products. The new equipment enabled the company to improve profitability despite a downturn in consumer demand for a major line in malted milk drinks. The totality of the Flexicon bulk handling system enabled the company to expand its product line without increasing floor area brought about a substantial reduction in production costs whilst doubling output.
A soft local economy decreased demand for Dairy Industries Jamaica’s malted milk drink, consumers were turning more towards milk powder and milk substitutes. This was a double blow for the ‘powder’ department which had not been contributing sufficiently to company profits. To counter this situation the decision was taken to add a new line of whole milk powder and a soy-based powder drink
alongside the established malted milk brand. The challenge for the powder line was to gain plant flexibility to run packages of all three products simultaneously or just one drink type. The plant relied on a heavy stainless steel solid flight auger conveyor system, this presented the main hurdle to the new layout required, its was far too heavy to manoeuvre unless a crane was brought in and repositioning would necessitate reinforcing the floor. In addition cleaning and flushing of the auger between ‘product’ types would create an unacceptable downtime.
Increased flexibility
The department gained the required flexibility by installing lightweight Flexicon flexible screw conveyors two Flexicon automated bag dump stations, two mixers, three surge bins (manufactured by Flexicon) and a second sachet packaging machine. Connecting all together are 11 flexible conveyors, lengths ranging from 4.5 to 10 metres.
There has also been a significant improvement in the working area where previous manual bag dumping has been replaced by a Flexicon bag dump station that collects dust via a high-velocity vacuum fan; the dump station connects directly to the flexible conveyors. The surge bins feed ingredients to the packaging
20 Solids & Bulk Handling • October 2011
www.solidsandbulk.co.uk
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