- RECIPE - 80 ingredients to manage.
- WHERE - In Australia.
- WHAT - Producing high-quality bread.
- CONSUMPTION - 15 tonnes of flour per day.
- HOW - With a Technosilos system for complete management of solid and liquid ingredients for industrial baking.
We are in New South Wales, at a factory of one of the largest Australian food groups. A large number of recipes in production requires the automated management of eighty ingredients, as well as the essential flour, water, salt and yeast.
Added to this is the requirement for traceability of all ingredients, with total control right through to kneading.
Cleanliness and hygiene, ease of maintenance, reliability and toughness are the key characteristics of the system installed by Technosilos, which also meets all Australian and international safety and food safety standards.
Particular characteristics of the system?
Efficient and effective.
Technosilos complete systems for the management of solid and liquid raw materials adapt to every production need with specific and customized solutions.
Storage and Macro dosing
The two main types of flour are received in bulk and arrive at the plant in fifty-tonne tanker trucks, where they are stored in two Technosilos food-grade aluminum silos equipped with an accurate weighing system which transmits the exact quantity of product stored inside them in real time.
Additional explosion protection and moisture control accessories make them particularly safe and suitable to maintain the properties of the stored product.
Following safety iron removal and sifting, pneumatic transport then transfers the required quantity of flour to the production weighing hoppers, without any loss of powder and without altering its temperature, thanks to the extraction technology and effective self-cleaning powder-removal filters..
Automatic Minor and Micro storage and dosing
Twelve minor powdered ingredients received in either 1 tonne big bags or 25/50 kg sacks are stored in as many internal buffers, able to receive a full tonne bag plus a margin which allows for convenient reloading, thus guaranteeing sufficient run-time for a whole production shift.
Thanks to the barcode production and management equipment, the system is able to recognise the product, guide the operator in order to prevent errors and contamination, and track the path right through to kneading.
The twelve ingredients are predosed locally in batches by high-precision weighing systems, with quantities ranging from a few kilos to a few tens of grams.
Liquid Storage and Dosing
In the same manner, some liquids such as oil and vinegar are received from tanker trucks and stored in stainless-steel tanks, before being transferred and dosed directly into the mixer via pumps and high-precision mass or magnetic flow meters.
The liquid yeast, on the other hand, comes from an internal plant circuit and is included and dosed in the recipe with the other ingredients.
Specific and Custom Solutions
Due to particular technical requirements of the dough, water dosing represents an element of particular importance in the successful outcome and stability of bread and other leavened products.
The system is able to automatically detect the ambient and flour temperature and, after establishing the “heating factor”, mix three different temperature waters in order to obtain the specific dough temperature that the operator has selected for the recipe in use.
This function enormously simplifies the operator's work and refines the quality and repeatability of the production results.
At the output of the moulding machines, the Technosilos system feeds the flour duster, transferring the flour from the storage silos in a completely independent manner.
Supervision and SCADA, the nerve centre of the system
The entire system is managed by a PLC, which receives recipes and information directly from a PC installed in the control room. This provides a real-time overview of the system, its operation and any issues that may occur.
