Major industry players prepare for iba trade fair
With an extensive range of equipment, processes and concepts being launched at this year’s iba in Germany, we examine some of the technology highlights expected at the event this month in Munich
During this year’s event, Theegarten-Pactec will be showcasing its latest portfolio for primary packaging of snacks at the joint stand with Winkler and Dünnebier.
The premium supplier develops and manufactures tailor-made packaging machines for small-sized confectionery and snacks, used by manufacturers around the globe.
Its series covers performance ranges from low-speed (up to 500 pieces per minute) to 2,300 pieces per minute with its continuous high-performance machines – suitable for every market and every requirement.
The high-performance machines developed by the Dresden-based packaging specialist are characterised by their ease of use and high degree of flexibility, according to the company.
The packaging systems from Theegarten-Pactec can easily be converted to other product formats or folding types. As a result, changes in the product format and folding type can be effected without significant downtime. The company is at Hall A6, stand 457.
Major releases
As French company Mecatherm explains, “This year will be the big event” for the business, with three major product releases expected to be showcased during the trade fair.
The firm is launching a brand new oven, which it says is flexible, precise and efficient, allowing for optimal baking for a large selection of products, while enabling quick changes to production, thanks to simple screen monitoring.
A new intuitive divider is also being presented, which combines the best of existing technologies, associating the precision of a volumetric divider to the possibility of working with high quality dough thanks to lamination. This retrofittable solution will allow businesses to obtain hydrated, pointed, calibrated dough, to give the baguette back its authentic and historical value.
Mecatherm will also present an intuitive and universal conveying system, which is bespoke to clients’ plant dimensions. It allows modulation of the production rate, and is designed around food safety. The system permits a homogenous and delicate handling of the products during the fermentation, cooling and freezing steps. The company is in hall B2, stand 150.
Swedish-headquartered manufacturer IPCO, formerly operating as Sandvik, is in a similar field, and will use this year’s iba to showcase its latest range of baking oven belts and stainless steel belt conveyors. It is in Hall A6, stand 131.
AMP Automation will be showcasing an automated multipacking flowrapping system, ideal for multi-layered and various collation product formations.
The company designs and builds bespoke and off the shelf solutions to automate products for packing into flowrapping machines, cartoning lines, tray systems and many other packaging formats. Hall B1/280. It is not only the latest in linear transport technology that the company use for automation, robotics can also be adopted to find the most suitable and flexible answer to packing needs.
In addition to complete lines; AMP Automation has the skills and experience to integrate automated solutions into existing lines, this can take the form of a single robot to multiple robots.
German-headquartered bakery manufacturer Fritsch is set to showcase its latest series of equipment, including a soft dough sheeting system, at this year’s iba trade fair.
As the company explained, its new line has been developed in response to a growing trend towards healthy eating, which has seen bakers increasingly processing softer and more developed doughs that classical machinery can only handle with difficulty.
In response, Fritsch’s SDS system, which will be exhibited at iba, which takes place between 15-20 September in Munich, Germany, has been devised to portion soft doughs and produce a continuous dough sheet.
Consequently, the high weight accuracy of dough blocks, the elimination of height drops, and the fine, uniform dusting with flour have been devised to help deliver smooth production.
The equipment is said to be particularly suited for artisanal breads and rolls, designed to deliver a hand-crafted appearance. Its capacity ranges from 800kg to 5 tonnes at a dough yield of 165 to 190, depending on the type of flour.
During iba, the business will update customers on key developments with its machinery, supporting everyone from handicraft bakers through to industrial groups seeking turnkey solutions.
Energy management advances
For its part, MIWE’s presence at this year’s iba is being marked by its motto of being an “all-round baking partner” offering a broad range of equipment.
As the company explains, it has been at the forefront of developing new processes such as frosting, covering all variations, from fresh produce to semi-baked products.
MIWE has also been a pioneer of low-energy baking, and the company is proud to have achieved promised cost-saving goals for its projects. This has included designing efficient systems that feature recovery and optimising energy management systems designed to meet the needs of bakeries.
Meanwhile, Walter, a leading manufacturer of wafer baking machines, is celebrating the 60th anniversary of its Jupiter series, developed for the production of rolled sugar cones, wafer cups, wafer discs and wafer rolls.
The machines are now in service in more than 80 countries and the new Jupiter A and Jupiter C lines are already producing on all continents. These have been installed for a wide range of customers, from large international food corporations, small and medium-sized family businesses, to clients in emerging markets.
As the company explained, every country has its own ideas regarding the perfect wafer product and the business aims to deliver bespoke solutions. For instance, the business developed a high-speed machine for the production of Monaka wafers in Asia.
Shortly before iba, the family-owned business launched a new machine for the production of chips (pictured). Known as the Meteor, the plant produces crispy products with reduced fat content. The company will be at this year’s event in hall A6 at stand 126.
Italian business Carle&Montanari-OPM will present a solution to package in flowpack style of very delicate products, which can’t be handled with traditional systems.
The system is said to be well suited to several applications, particularly for the bakery market world. Its features of flexibility and “handling care” are the skills requested to best preserve the integrity and quality of products, such as baked items that have ingredients on their surface or irregular edges.
The configuration includes the packaging of biscuits, which have been previously grouped into stacks through a loading cell equipped with fast picker Delta robots.
Thanks to a special Smart Pick gripping system, robots are able to handle single biscuits and form stacks from one to four pieces, by depositing them synchronised between the lugs of the JT PRO infeed main chain.
Designed with stainless steel frame and with all parts in food grade standards, this solution has been created to meet the highest sanitation criteria for wide production environments.
In addition, its design requires simple maintenance that can be handled in a short timeframe. Upon exiting the flowpack JT PRO, the biscuit packs are then placed in boxes that are processed through a secondary packaging cell.
This allows the system to form, fill and close boxes through a mono-block frame. As the company explained, the equipment has been developed with a user-friendly design that has also been devised to be easy to clean. The business will be presenting its range of equipment in Hall B1, stand 377.
This year’s event is a special one for German-based WDS, as it makes its debut at the trade fair. The business has an extensive machine and plant programme that covers the entire spectrum of deposited sweets, with different applications and throughputs. Production plants of Winkler und Dünnebier focus on quality and reliability, as well as innovation.
The business is also a specialist in dosing technology, and will be offering solutions for pourable and tail-less masses, as well as systems for special applications used within the confectionery industry.
Unveiling new lines
Among the major developments for Bühler at this year’s iba will be its new ContiMix dough extruder (main story image), combining mixing, kneading and forming in one step.
As the company explained, these three core processes are crucial to quality when producing bakery products, with its new line developed to work with the creation of pastries, pizzas, rolls and soft pretzels.
The equipment has been designed to create more intense taste, bigger volume and improved crumb structure in baked goods.
In addition, producers are also able to reduce labour time and production costs, with reported cost savings of up to nine per cent higher dough yield and elimination of the dough proofing step. This is made possible due to higher dough plasticity.
According to the company, the combined mixing-kneading-forming process takes place in three zones. As it passes through each of these, the dough is given the properties it needs for the selected end product. In the first zone, the dry and liquid ingredients are dosed and mixed according to recipe.
These are then sent to the second zone where they are kneaded into homogeneous dough in a continuously operating twin-screw extruder. In the third zone, depending on the end product, the dough undergoes a vacuum or pressure treatment to achieve the desired dough properties in terms of elasticity and plasticity.
These can be set individually according to the recipe. For example, with laminated doughs that are kneaded under vacuum, the dough proofing is completely eliminated and the dough can be directly fed into the laminating system. The dough is constantly chilled in all three zones of the ContiMix, with the chilling being more intense in the third work step.
Advantages
The configuration of the extruder screws can be adjusted during the project engineering to meet individual customer requirements. Switching from one dough recipe to producing another one can be done with just a few movements.
The continuous process ultimately makes it possible to eliminate an additional dough proofing period, and the dough handling associated with that.
One of its focuses has been a design with a closed construction that fulfils the highest demands in terms of sanitation and food safety.
The dough extruder is about nine meters long and operates continuously, producing a 600mm wide by 15-20mm thick dough stream at a capacity of up to 2,400kg of dough per hour. The system will be on display at the Bühler stand, which is combined with Haas, in Hall A6, stand 361/371.
Optimising bread dough handling
New technology which optimises handling of bread dough through precise temperature control on Tweedy mixing systems is being introduced by Baker Perkins at iba in Munich.
The Tweedy SuperCool process features radically enhanced bowl cooling to provide strict management of dough temperature in any climate.
Other Baker Perkins upgrades making their first appearance at iba focus on making bread and biscuit production smoother through improvements to hygienic design, make maintenance and cleaning simpler and quicker.
Meanwhile, the company’s Accurist 2.1 dough divider now features foam and rinse hose down cleaning, and a customised low pressure spray gun is supplied. It uses servo control to achieve the optimum balance between accuracy and quality, even at high output. IBA will also see the first showing of a seeding attachment for the Multitex4 moulder.
This technique to make a fully enrobed seeded loaf involves rolling the coiled dough piece in the seeds or grains before panning. The company will be in Hall A6/stand 321
