The spiral conveyor you choose to use for your dairy products has an enormous impact on your operations' personnel, processes, and profitability. When you have dairy products that rest directly on the belt, your primary concern is to keep the line sanitary while reducing downtime and limiting product damage.
An edge-driven spiral conveyor allows you to elevate or lower products and extend the same belting to eliminate the need for transferring items onto another conveyor. Removing transfers from your line design can reduce catch points while moving products efficiently between the processing and packaging stages.
Whether you are producing cheese, butter, yogurt, or any other type of raw dairy product like ice cream, a SideDrive Conveyor Co. design gives you endless configuration options to suit your application.
What Makes an Edge-Driven Spiral Conveyor Cost-Effective?
The FDA defines dairy products under two sections of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Due to the increased risks that raw dairy poses to the public, producers must prevent contamination. Any harborage points in the line’s design could lead to bacterial growth, especially if sanitation teams cannot easily access these areas on the spiral.
An edge-driven, spiral design eliminates all harborage and catch-points from the system, making it easier to maintain a safe production line while reducing the downtime required for cleaning. What’s more, you can improve Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) by:
- Optimizing your sanitation regimes with an open and accessible frame construction
- Reducing unplanned downtimes with less maintenance due to wear and tear on the components
With plastic belting and no components requiring lubrication, you further reduce the risk of product contamination.
Withstanding the Harsh Sanitation Regimes Required for Dairy Products
Increasing the cleanability of the spiral requires no parts that have metal-to-metal friction while ensuring the entire system can withstand the harsh industrial detergents used during wash-down processes.
The chemical concentrations of cleaning solutions will vary between plants and applications. Our spiral conveyors can stand up to high-concentration caustic wash-downs like quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs). In addition, as the design is open and accessible, the reduced exposure to QACs during every wash-down can extend the usable life of the conveyor’s components and belt.
Some additional benefits available from a SideDrive Conveyor Co. spiral design are:
- Using only food-safe materials like USFDA-approved belting and stainless-steel construction
- Including sloped surfaces that provide easy runoff during sanitation procedures
- Reducing harborage points with continuous welds and a plate frame structure that is easy to clean
- Having no metal shavings, flakes, or black specks common with metal belting used in other designs
Protect Your Dairy Products with a Cost-Effective and Compact Spiral Conveyor
Our modular design gives you the freedom to configure a sanitary conveyor solution for any kind of facility requirements. A continuous and transferless conveyor system with efficient elevation changes enables you to transport up, down, or over any interference points.
SideDrive Conveyor Co. continues to drive innovations that lead to safer dairy product handling with zero transfers and easier elevation changes. Our systems are modular, flexible, and accessible, making them the best option to protect your dairy products from contamination and increasing your throughput during every shift by limiting planned and unplanned downtimes.
We can help you design a compact, cost-effective dairy conveyor that fits perfectly into your facility. To get started, reach out to SideDrive Conveyor Co.