Factory Showing Powder Handling Equipment for producing food flavorings

INDUSTRIES

Equipment for Manufacturing Food Flavourings & Spices

Matcon is an expert in designing and supplying efficient manufacturing systems using stainless steel IBCs which improve production capabilities and product quality for spices, food seasonings and flavourings.

Whether implementing a full factory redesign or make stepped changes, Matcon can design a solution to reach your goals.

DESIGNING POWDER HANDLING SOLUTIONS

for Improving Production of Food Ingredients & Flavourings

Matcon IBC manufacturing systems are ideal for food manufacturers who have a diverse, rich portfolio of products and are handling SKUs that contain allergens. Industrial food production equipment of today should offer manufacturers the ability to make-to-order and reduce cross-contamination risks.

Matcon delivers food processing systems that achieve increased productivity, improved process efficiency and reduced manufacturing costs. Our engineering experts design bespoke systems to meet production targets and enable companies to comply to the regulatory standards in the food industry. The flexibility of production that a Matcon IBC systems delivers helps our customers to stay ahead of their competition.

The food flavourings sector faces growing challenges: expanding product lines, diverse ingredients, stringent allergen controls, and tighter regulations. These can put pressure on the production team who look for ways to maintain target outputs, deliver superior product quality and ensure consumer safety.

Traditional coupled processing methods are too cumbersome & inflexible these days. Any issues in the process chain will create bottlenecks, adversely affecting the whole process and increasing the Takt time of manufacturing. These traditional systems often result in campaign manufacture as it takes so long for a clean-down and set up between recipe changeovers, which generates inventory that requires warehousing and runs the risk of obsolescence.

Even if container based processing is in place, the recipe ingredients have differing bulk densities & particle sizes, which can cause blend separation when handling and discharging the powders from the container. They can also be sticky and poor flowing which may cause blockages in traditional butterfly valve bins.

Finally, any dust that escapes the process is a potential cross-contamination or allergen risk.

Matcon specialise in designing lean, agile production systems using hygienic food-grade stainless steel Intermediate Bulk Containers (IBCs) to both move & mix powders. Using a parallel processing design, the manufacturing process steps of formulation, mixing, packing & cleaning are no longer joined, but are undertaken simultaneously and harmonized

Why Matcon IBCs are ideal for manufacturing food ingredients & flavourings

Matcon IBCs are designed to ensure there are no dead zones and the Cone Valve promotes discharge through mass flow, protecting the Blend Uniformity by ensuring the powder particles don’t separate during the discharge process. This results in a superior product quality in the final product.

Using the IBC as the blending vessel means there is no need for clean-down between recipe batch changes, saving time, reducing contamination risk and creating a high OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) rate. Our solutions are also ATEX compliant and compatible with food plant design such as HACCP & EHEDG, along with being suitable for GMP design.

As an adjunct to our container blending capabilities, we also offer high shear mixing with our Intensifier and the ability to perform Liquid Addition without stopping the blender.

Matcon has over four decades of creating top-quality manufacturing systems that have helped our customers around the world become more competitive and respond to changing consumer tastes, whilst achieving their own manufacturing objectives.

Matcon systems are modular in design adjusting to your needs as you grow. Over the years, we have designed everything from a simple decoupling of a fixed mixer to improve capacity, to full lights-out automation systems using IBCs moved around by AGVs. Our designs have helped to revolutionise businesses and enable our customers to produce superior products, efficiently handle allergens and comply with the food standards regulations in their territory.

For your own reassurance, you can test your product on full-scale equipment at one of our global sites, so you can feel more confident in your purchase. We can also enhance the testing using NIR (Near Infrared spectroscopy) to optimize blending times.

Matcon also partners with our IDEX MPT colleagues to integrate milling, sifting and powder dispersion equipment for the food industry, should your design solution require it. The Quadro G96 Food Mill is the most recent addition to IDEX MPT's portfolio of manufacturing solutions for the food industry, offering gentle milling of high value food ingredients.

Spice powders segregate, bridge, and cake during processing and storage due to variations in particle size, density, shape, moisture, and fat content.

Segregation occurs for a couple of reasons. If powder mixes are subjected to vibration, larger particles rise through percolation, and fines move downwards under a sifting effect. In addition, higher density particles migrate downwards under gravity. Rounded or granular particles move freely, whilst fibrous or flaky particles tend to resist flow.

Bridging occurs as oils and moisture in the spice mix and particle shape cause interlocking & sticking together in the hopper. When the container outlet is opened, the initial material discharges, but powders higher up may cling together creating a bridge.

Caking can occur over time if spice powders are left to settle – the moisture and fat content cause the material to stick together and start to solidify which will then stop the powders from discharging freely from any container.

Solution: A Matcon Cone Valve is ideal for discharging spice powder mixes as the mass-flow process prevents the particles from rolling and separating and as the cone lifts into the powder it breaks any bridges that appear.

Using a single container to hold a discrete recipe batch improves traceability and process efficiency in food flavouring production.

IBC (Intermediate Bulk Container) systems improve traceability and process efficiency by creating discrete batches which are held in one container. This is valuable in food flavour manufacturing, where batches are small, formulations are sensitive, may contain allergens, and regulatory scrutiny is high.

Traceability can be maintained from the outset as IBCs are compatible with RFID tagging and MES/ERP systems. As closed containers, IBCs minimise the risk of cross-contamination and can be dedicated to specific allergen classes.

Process efficiency comes from reduced handling steps, shorter formulation times, reduced cleaning downtime since the IBC is a self-contained blending vessel, the ability to dose directly from an IBC and a reduction in waste as powder flow is more controlled.

Solution – a Matcon IBC solution is modular in construction enabling scalability as your business grows. Considerate design delivers batch consistency improvements, manual handling and human error reductions, improved regulatory compliance and increased throughputs for strong returns on investment (ROIs).