A neat solution brings savings

The company installed a Food Grade Primary (FGP) Cleaner from Flexco to solve the problem which was resulting in over 20kg of carryback per day.

There are eight conveyors in the lamb cut room – two modular and six white nitrile plied belts.

It was the two modular belts that experienced the most carryback and were leading to a huge amount of product waste and denting the company's bottom line.

These belts were located in the cold-boning lamb processing facility, which operated two, eight-hour shifts per day.

While the company did have a cleaner – which consisted of segmented blades mounted onto a head pole, which was then mounted onto the head pulley with the blades tensioned via a counterweight system – it was of poor design.

That was all the market had to offer at the time, according to the senior supervisor in the company's lamb cut room Peter Mueller.

“Meat would accumulate between the cleaner tips and the belt’s surface, and the build-up would cause such tension between the cleaner and the belt that the force of tension would eventually cause the cleaner to flip over.

Often, this problem occurred during a shift where the counterweight system was tied firmly in place.”

The counterweight system did not work well in the application, with the blades needing to be cleaned every 15 to 20 minutes, causing production to stop three or four times per hour.

This counterweight system was extremely difficult to tension and was the main reason for excess stoppage in production.

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