Prolife Foods needed a gentle conveying system for bulk handling of peanuts and cashews. They wanted their products fully contained during product transfer, to eliminate waste, and they needed a conveying system that would not damage or degrade the materials. Prolife Foods uses an original F3 Floveyor for hygienic conveying of nuts in food-grade materials handling.
Family-owned, FMCG food processing business
Prolife Foods is a privately owned, global food company based in New Zealand. The company was founded in 1984 by Bernie and Kaye Crosby to “Providing great food with obsessive service”. Their portfolio consists of FMCG brands consisting of nuts, dried fruits, cereals, grains and other food products. Prolife Foods wanted to reduce the waste they experienced while conveying peanuts and cashew nuts at their Te Rapa manufacturing plant in Hamilton, New Zealand.
Reducing spillage and wastage with no product degradation
Spillage was occurring between the roasting and bulk bag packing processes due to a cleated belt transfer conveyor. The lost product, which had to be swept up and disposed of daily, was losing Prolife Foods several kilograms of product per day.
The challenge was to find a gentle handling transfer system that would not damage, break or degrade the nuts, and contain the product and eliminate the spillage and waste of product.
Switch conveying systems
A 3-metre-long F3 Floveyor was selected after product trials were complete. It was manufactured in 304 stainless steel and mounted on a mobile frame with height and angle adjustments to perfectly meet the process interface needs. The turnover from purchase to production was a quick three months. Production has been running without waste since the installation.
Albert Carsten, Engineer at Prolife Foods, is happy with the Floveyor choice due to ease of use and cleaning capabilities.
“It pretty much lives in front of the roaster and gets wheeled to the cleaning bay for cleaning in between runs,” Andrew said.
“When we clean the unit, we put it into the reverse rotation of that used for running product because it spins faster. We water blast as it spins.”
Big cost savings in waste reduction and quick ROI
After 12 months of running, with no product degradation – and a totally contained transfer of product – Prolife Foods have achieved a waste reduction of approximately NZD 50,000.
“It has done very well for us. We used to lose a lot of product on the old gooseneck conveyor but we recover all our product using this Floveyor unit. It paid for itself in a very short space of time,” Albert says.
Prolife Foods are now rolling out additional original Floveyor conveyors across the site to handle products such as pecans, walnuts and brazil nuts, including oiled and salted varieties. Due to the first machine’s success, Prolife Foods purchased two more original Floveyor F3 conveyors for use in their Victoria, Australia plant. The same level of operation and savings have been achieved.
If you would like information on how you can use an original Floveyor conveying system in your FMCG food processing operation, get in touch with us. We have a wide variety of conveying machinery and equipment to gently and hygienically convey fine powders and granules and a lower total cost of ownership for a quick return on your investment.
