In 2007, the UK's largest snack food manufacturer
challenged CovElec to devise a method of mixing vegetable oils
and seasoning powders to spray as flavouring onto an extruded
wheat collet (extruded shape).
After 4 weeks of R&D and several iterations and designs
a prototype was put forward for trial. This proved to be successful
with a couple of caveats, which took further development to understand the
capability limitations.
8 weeks later 3 machines were manufactured and delivered to site
for integration to the production line, these proved to be a success and have
been running ever since.
With encouragement from the clients R&D and
engineering teams, CovElec were asked to continue the
development. From this point, the design never stood still; by 2009 a
standalone fully integrated system had been manufactured and installed at
one of the manufacturing sites in the North East of England.
The design continued to move forward with the emphasis
on capability and capacity to take into account the various seasoning
powders and high output extruders at the remaining sites.
2011 saw the pinnacle of this specific design when 3 mixers were
built for one of the largest snack plants in the West Midlands. These
fully integrated mixers, each with the capability of 120% of the
extruder output have significantly delivered savings through improved yields
and drastically reduced seasoning related customer complaints.
