How to Optimize Freezer Production with Flexible Conveying Solutions

Freezing food is a great way to keep it in its freshest state while ensuring food safety. After all, by definition, when it comes to food processing, freezing is the "method of preserving food by lowering the temperature to inhibit microorganism growth."*

So… you're going to optimize your product by freezing it, but what about how you move it?

When your conveying equipment is subpar, it's doing anything but optimizing production. Hygienic spiral conveyors help move frozen and individually quick frozen (IQF) foods while optimizing production.

Discover these three ways how hygienic spiral conveyor systems improve the performance of your frozen food operation.

Sanitary Spiral Conveyors Provide Space Savings

Basic transport needs are met with hygienic, modular, edge-driven spiral conveyors.

But that's not all!

Specially designed to fit your space and needs, modular, sanitary spiral conveyors allow for endless configurations that help optimize your current production space, rather than requiring you to expand upon it.

With sanitary spiral conveyor systems, you can:

• Move products up to and down from a freezer
• Move products up or down between floors without lifts or elevators
• Transport goods from processing to packaging areas

And, by eliminating the need for long incline conveyors that often perform these tasks, you'll save space, further optimizing your valuable floorspace.

Transferless Conveyors Eliminate Product Loss 

Product loss is costly, but food products are fragile, and consumers understandably expect that their purchases remain undamaged. Whether upstream or downstream from a freezer, rough handling can jeopardize a product’s integrity and necessitate it to be marked out as a loss due to ripping, tearing or breakage.

Designed to be gentle, transferless and hygienic spiral conveyor systems eliminate product loss before and after freezing. With a drive located on the side of the belt, edge-driven sanitary spiral conveyors help provide a gentle, continuous motion throughout with even tension that won't make your products budge.

The flexible design of modular plastic belting allows for multiple incline, decline, radius and straight conveyors combined into a single, seamless run–all without transfers. By reducing or eliminating conveyor to conveyor transfers where gaps can potentially cause your product to “bounce” or “shift”, you dramatically reduce product loss.

Plastic Belting & Hygienic Features Enhance Food Safety

Hygienic features and washdown capability are essential to keeping frozen products food-safe.

SideDrive sanitary spiral conveyor systems are loaded with hygienic features that do just that. These features make washdown more effective than traditional spirals and include:

• Open, drumless design
• Edge-driven belt
• Sloped surfaces for easy run-off
• Cantilevered, stainless, open-frame design
• Plate frame structure easy for cleaning
• Hygienic feet
• Continuous welds to prevent harborage of bacteria
• Welded standoffs that separate parallel surfaces
• Solid UHMW wearstrips 

The plastic belting used on SideDrive conveyors is an additional food safety feature. Unlike metal belting, plastic mitigates multiple potential sources of contamination. With plastic, gone are the metal shavings that occur due to metal on metal rubbing and wear. Plastic also eliminates the need for lubricants that can leave behind hard-to-clean residue, further protecting your products.

While metal belting is rigid and can damage frozen foods, plastic belting is gentle, leaving unmarked, undamaged, and uncontaminated products.

*Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/freezing-food-preservation