Conveyor Drive Food Safety Issues Solved
Product contamination is always a risk for any food processor and can occur at many points along a production line. Award-winning food processor, Cedenco Foods, is no different. Here’s how EQM eliminated a food safety and contamination issue at one of their plants, increasing productivity at the same time.
Challenge:
The Hastings branch of Cedenco Foods peels and processes apples into juiced, diced and pureed products. The diced and pureed apple is then packaged into bulk pouches for sale worldwide.
Cedenco’s engineering contractor contacted EQM about ongoing issues with oil leaking from conveyor internal drive drums. These were mounted above conveyor belts and transferred the unprocessed apples. Every time the drive drum leaked oil (albeit food grade), the product and belting were being contaminated.
Seals in the drive drums were constantly failing due to the heavy washdown environment. By the time this was eventually picked up, it had led to drive drum failure. Replacing the drive drums would be expensive and would normally mean extended production down-time to swap them out when they had spares on hand.
So EQM was tasked with:
- Eliminating the food safety risk by taking away potential for oil leaks to occur
- Increasing the protection ratings to IP69K to withstand harsh washdown conditions
- Making conveyor drives more accessible and serviceable
- Delivering reliability to avoid production downtime
- Lowering maintenance costs
- Lowering the spare parts inventory value
Action:
A site visit enabled Anthony to collect information on the existing internal drive drums. From this, he calculated critical speeds and determined external gear drive specifications. He also identified the correct bearings and belt drive sprocket sizes to minimise the engineering required to make his recommended changes. His quote listed the stainless steel components needed to meet IP69K requirements, sourced from EQM’s leading Hygiene range. Advice was shared with the engineers on technical changes needed to complete the upgrade.
EQM supplied a kit for each conveyor which included:
- CLEAN-GEARTECH i Series 304 stainless steel worm gear box with shielded output shaft seals
- CLEAN-GEARTECH 316L stainless steel IP69K electric motor
- DERTEC stainless steel hygienic FL205 bearings and housings with sealed bearing covers and back seals
- DERTEC stainless steel stand-off spacers
- DERTEC hygienic bolts and nuts with nitrile seals
- DERTEC S/S cable glands for screened cables
- SUPERDRIVE belting sprockets and belting support rollers
All other shafts and parts were made and installed to the highest standard by an expert team of stainless-steel fabricators and EQM approved fitters.
These kits were assembled from items in stock at EQM, so the conveyors could be converted just prior to the start of the 2024 season.
Benefits:
- Food Safety Audits passed – oil leaks have been eliminated
- Increased production – less unplanned downtime cleaning up contaminant
- Reduced time servicing – gear drives are now external
- Longer drive life – gear drives not working to the limits of their capacity now that they are delivering more torque to same load. Reduced replacement costs
- Reduced spare parts inventory value – gear box repair kits cost significantly less than complete drive drums
- A happy Production Manager and Maintenance Co-ordinator – a proactive (rather than reactive) approach to keeping production on track
- Fit for purpose – IP69K solution based on the best components to suit the application
Peeled apple exit conveyor cw EQM hygienic kit.
Contact us for a solution to increase productivity on your production line today. Benefit from our knowledge, expertise and experience.
